


Constant as the Northern Star

by celzmccelz



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alien Biology, Angst, Everything turns out all right in the end, Hurt/Comfort, Implausible science, M/M, Medical stuff, Pining, Telepathy, alex manes' heroic quest to make michael accept love and affection, i just want these idiots to be okay, jesse manes needs his own trigger warning, kyle valenti is doing his best, mildly kinky shower sex, not compliant with any pre-existing Antar canon, post-season one, pregnancy-related illness, the mpreg fix-it fic no one asked for, will someone please give these boys a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2020-11-27 07:41:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 53,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20944769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celzmccelz/pseuds/celzmccelz
Summary: Michael stares at Kyle. “But I’m aguy! How can I be pregnant?”Kyle looks embarrassed. “Well, you appear to have a fully functioning set of female reproductive organs—or, I mean, like, the kind of reproductive organs that are associated with a double X-chromosome in humans, so I’d assume that you probably became pregnant when semen was introduced into your reproductive tract—”“Jesus Christ, Kyle!” says Michael. He could have happily lived the rest of his life without ever hearing Kyle Valenti say the words “semen” and “reproductive tract.”Kyle’s eyes widen. “Have you been having unprotected sex?”“Oh my God, I am not having this conversation with you!”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Vomiting (lots of vomiting), discussion of the need to terminate a pregnancy for medical reasons, mentions of sexual assault (not graphic, not involving main characters). This author supports the rights of everyone to make their own reproductive decisions about their own bodies.

The thing about entropy is, you can change it, but it doesn’t go away. You can’t stop the heat-death of the universe, just like Michael can never stop his life from spinning out of control.

When he gets back to his trailer after fucking Maria in the Wild Pony bathroom, Alex is still waiting for him. He’s wearing a leather jacket instead of one of those stupid preppy button-up shirts, and it looks..._really good _on him. For some reason it just pisses Michael off. Like, how dare Alex show up at Michael’s trailer in a leather jacket _now_, after everything that’s happened?

“Have you been here the whole time?” Michael demands. It comes out more belligerent than he intended.

Alex blinks at him, his face soft and confused. “I was worried, Guerin. You showed up covered in blood, told me it was a bad time, and ran away. Are you all right? What’s going on?”

The way he’s looking at him is making Michael’s chest hurt. “I can’t do this, Alex.”

“What do you mean?” He doesn’t understand. Goddamn it, why can’t he just understand and leave Michael alone?

“I can’t do _this_. Us.” Michael gestures at the space between them. “It doesn’t work. We’ve tried it. It just destroys me every goddamn time. I’m done.”

Alex draws his breath in, sharp and shocked. He looks like he’s been slapped. “Guerin—”

“Don’t you get it? Every time I look at you now, I see what your family did to my family. I felt everything that happened to them. I _felt _them die. I can still feel it. Every time I close my eyes, I see the explosion. I hear them screaming in my head. I just want to stop thinking about it, and I can’t do that if you’re here reminding me of it every goddamn second!”

There are tears in Alex’s eyes. It’s almost unbearable to hurt him like this. But Michael hurts too, and he’s so, so tired of it.

“Please Alex,” he says. “Just go.”

Alex goes.

***

The twelve hours after Max’s death are a kaleidoscope of horror. Liz holding Max’s body and crying. Isobel holding Max’s body and screaming that this is Liz’s fault. Liz and Isobel screaming at each other. Rosa (_Rosa_???) standing to the side looking freaked out and demanding to know what’s going on. _Yeah, that makes two of us, kid_, thinks Michael, as he stares at what’s left of his brother. A numbness is spreading through him, leaving him blank and cold, like nuclear winter after a bomb goes off.

Michael hadn’t realized just how much Max had been doing to hold them all together until he was gone, and they fell apart one by one.

Liz does what Liz does best and bails on the situation. She takes her sister and drives out of Roswell in the middle of the night. Michael doesn’t know where she goes, and he doesn’t really care.

Isobel has a complete fucking break with reality. She shoves Max’s body back into his pod, sobbing, “We can get him back! We can fix this! We can fix this!”

For the first few weeks, she calls Michael over and over again, demanding that he do something, make Liz come back, reverse whatever Max did to resurrect Rosa, figure out how he did it so they can do it to him. Eventually he can’t deal with it anymore and starts ignoring her calls. She shows up at his trailer in the middle of the night drunk off her ass, screaming that he never loved Max the way she did. He drives her home and puts her to bed. Then he takes her car keys away and calls her mom to tell her that Isobel’s fallen off the wagon again. When he goes over to see Isobel two days later, she refuses to even let him in.

It hurts, what she said to him about Max, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. There’s a stabbing, vacant ache in his mind where Max used to be, but he knows it’s nothing compared to the devastation that Isobel feels without her twin, her other self. They were always first for each other, and Michael second.

A long time ago, Alex had made Michael feel like maybe he, too, could be first for someone. But it turns out he was as wrong about that as he was about his dumb childhood fantasy of his parents coming to take him home.

Alex left Roswell the day after Max died. Michael doesn’t know if he transferred to another base or went AWOL or what. He just woke up to find a package lying outside his door with note on it in Alex’s handwriting. _I’m sorry. I hope you find what you’re looking for_. Inside was the last piece of the ship’s console, shimmering with muted colors where the sunlight touched it. Michael stared at it for a long time. Then he threw it as hard as he could against the side of the trailer, and it shattered into glittering shards.

***

The really stupid thing is that in the chaos of Noah’s death, Max’s death, Rosa’s resurrection, Isobel’s breakdown, and Alex’s and Liz’s sudden departures from Roswell, no one bothered to tell Maria that aliens existed.

So Michael doesn’t tell her either. 

He knows it’s a dick move, but he tells himself it’s the same dick move that Maria’s two best friends also made, so that cancels out some of the dickishness. He is maybe not reasoning super clearly at the moment.

Maria can tell he’s a disaster right now, but she figures that Max’s death is an adequate enough reason for that and doesn’t try to make him explain anything. 

So he spends his evenings hanging out with Maria at the Wild Pony, which isn’t that different from what he used to do before they were a thing, only now he goes home with her every night after she closes up. He stops going back to his airstream altogether, which is great because his airstream is full of alien crap and places he and Alex have fucked, and he doesn’t want to think about _any _of that shit right now. 

In the mornings, Maria makes him breakfast, and he mows her lawn or cleans out her gutters or fixes shit around her house. She keeps telling him he doesn’t have to, but he can tell she likes the feeling of being taken care of. It’s the least he can do to make up for how spectacularly he’s lying to her. He can remember thinking he maybe had feelings for Maria—that she could be a fresh start for him. He’s still here because he’s hoping maybe he can feel like that again, if he gives it enough time. And because he has nowhere else to go.

He tries really hard to keep it together, to get better, to move on, just like he’s had to do for every other shitty thing that’s happened to him.

But no matter how hard he shoves his feelings down during the day, they come out in his nightmares. Every night he wakes up, sweating and trembling, from dreams of Max dying, his mother dying, his family screaming as Jesse Manes tortures them. He dreams about Alex dead too, blown up in Iraq, or burned up in a car accident, or naked and cold on a metal table with a handprint over his mouth.

He has other dreams about Alex that aren’t nightmares, and those are almost worse, because it hurts so much when he wakes up and they aren’t real. 

Then the vomiting starts.

At first it’s just in the mornings. It becomes part of his daily routine. Wake up from another round of nightmares, throw up, brush his teeth, skip breakfast, and go to work. Then it happens more often—twice, then three, then four times a day, and other people start to notice.

When it begins, Maria just thinks he’s hungover, which makes sense as far as she’s concerned because she’s used to watching him drink an entire forty of tequila every night. But the thing is, Michael doesn’t _get _hungover. He just pounds a bottle of acetone and goes about his day. But lately acetone makes him feel worse, which doesn’t make any fucking sense. He can’t keep it down. He can’t keep _anything _down, except maybe like water and saltines, and sometimes not even that.

After a couple of days of watching him run to the bathroom and throw up after every meal, Maria starts to get worried. “Are you sick?” she asks, trying to feel his disgusting, sweaty forehead to see if he has a fever.

“I don’t get sick,” he says, batting her hand away.

She frowns. “Is this some kind of macho bullshit? Like, being sick compromises your masculinity so you refuse to go to the doctor until you fall over?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry about it.” He grabs his coat and heads for the door. “I’ve gotta go to work, I’ll see you later.”

“Michael—”

He turns and gives her his best cocky bastard I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about smile, the one he used to use on Max whenever he tried to get him to pay his parking tickets or talk about his feelings. “Really, it’s nothing. I probably just overdid it last night. I’ll feel better in a few hours.”

As the door bangs shut behind him, he hears her call, “But you didn’t drink anything last night!”

He has to pull over to throw up again on the way to the junkyard. When he’s done, he leans his forehead against the steering wheel and takes deep breaths, trying to make the nausea subside. He has no idea what’s wrong with him, but it isn’t a fucking stomach bug. Michael has never been sick in his life. When the other kids in the group home got the flu or strep throat, he was always the only one who didn’t come down with it.

Maybe his body is just fed up with his brain refusing to think about things and pretending they didn’t happen. His mom. Alex. Max.

Goddamnit, _Max_. He didn’t talk to Max for ten years except for the obligatory sniping at each other every time he got arrested. It had been a long time since they were close, he tells himself. Why does it hurt _so much_ now that he’s gone?

The vomiting doesn’t go away. Michael manages to get through about another week by choking down Gatorade, but then he passes out during one of his shifts at the junkyard. He wakes up in an ambulance with Brad from high school, who used to be a football douche and is now an EMT, asking him if he can tell him how many fingers he’s holding up and who the president is.

“Stop! Let me out!” he rasps, trying to yank the I.V. out of his arm.

“It’s okay,” says Brad, grabbing his wrists. “You had an accident. We’re taking you to the hospital. Everything is going to be fine.”

Michael, who does _not _react well to being physically restrained by large, douchey male people, has to clamp down on his initial panicked impulse to throw Brad across the ambulance with his mind.

“I don’t need—” he realizes his voice is coming out reedy and scared, stops, clears his throat, tries again. Does his best to sound calm. “I don’t need a doctor. I just have like, the flu or something. If I go home and sleep it off, I’ll be fine.”

“You lost consciousness,” says Brad patiently, like Michael is an irrational child. “You may have hit your head when you fell over. You need to go to the hospital so they can make sure you don’t have a brain injury.”

If they suspect head trauma, that means a C.T., maybe an M.R.I., and who knows what kind of alien weirdness that will turn up. “No! No doctors! _No hospital_!” Michael tries to sit up, but he’s hit with a wave of dizziness and his vision goes sparkly around the edges. He rolls over and throws up all over Brad’s shoes.

Brad yells, “Jesus fucking Christ, dude!” then remembers he’s a medical professional and says, “Michael, you’re in real bad shape. You can’t even sit up, let alone walk. You need a hospital.”

Michael squeezes his eyes shut, trying not to panic. “Fine,” he says. “Take me to Kyle Valenti. _Just _Kyle Valenti. No one else.”

***

Kyle is there to meet the ambulance, with his stupid handsome face looking all professional and doctor-y.

“Dude, what’s the deal with this guy?” Michael hears Brad say to Kyle. “He threw a fit in the ambulance and refused to see anyone except you. Does he not have insurance? Are you treating him under the table?”

“No, he’s just, um...scared of doctors,” says Kyle. “He trusts me, so he gets less freaked out if I’m the one treating him.”

“I’m not scared of doctors, you jackass!” Michael croaks. “And I definitely don’t trust you!” Both of these statements are lies, but he’s not going to give Kyle the satisfaction of seeing how terrified he is right now.

“Shut up, Michael!” Kyle mutters. Louder her says, “Thanks guys, I’ll take him from here.”

Kyle gets rid of the nurses with more bullshit about Michael’s supposed medical phobia and manages to get Michael into a private exam room.

“All right, man, what’s going on?” he asks, feeling Michael’s pulse. “Are you okay? Is this some alien thing, like when Max’s powers made him sick? Do you want me to call Isobel?”

Michael flinches at Max’s name. “Don’t call Isobel. I’m fine. I just need to rest for a while.”

Kyle frowns. “You’re definitely not fine. You’re tachycardic, your eyes are visibly sunken, and you apparently can’t sit up without fainting. If you were a normal person, I’d diagnose you with severe dehydration and prescribe rest and I.V. fluids. But since you’re an alien, I have no idea if this is some kind of weird alien problem that needs to be cured by like, drinking gasoline or something.”

“_Acetone_, not gasoline, shithead. And I tried that, it doesn’t fucking help.” 

Kyle looks pained. “Okay, acetone doesn’t help. Could you tell me a little bit more about what’s wrong?”

“Do you want to know what’s wrong with me, Kyle?” Michael snarls. “My life is shit, okay? My brother’s dead, my sister isn’t speaking to me, and the rest of my family got blown up in front of me three months ago! Everyone who ever cared about me is either dead, or crazy, or _gone_.”

His voice breaks and he realizes with horror that he’s about a half second away from full on sobbing. He’s not going to start crying in front of Kyle fucking Valenti, he’s _not_. He swallows hard and tries to get control of himself, but the words keep spilling out. “I have _nothing_, okay? I mean all my life I thought I had nothing, but now I _really_ have nothing. I’m never getting out of here, I’m never going home, I told the only person I’ve ever loved to go fuck himself, I’m lying to my girlfriend, who will _definitely _hate me when she finds out, I have nightmares every night, and I _can’t stop fucking puking_.” He glares at Kyle, breathing hard and shaking. “So fucking diagnose _that_, Dr. Valenti.” 

Instead of getting pissed off for being yelled at when he’s trying to do his job, Kyle just looks really sorry for him. Which is the worst. “Well first of all, I think you’re suffering from trauma-induced PTSD—”

Michael rolls his eyes. “Dude, I’ve had PTSD for like twenty years. It’s not a big deal.”

Kyle winces. “Normally I’d recommend therapy, but I don’t think it would be possible to find a therapist equipped to handle your particular set of issues.”

“Yeah, because I’m just that fucked up. Nice, dude.”

“Because of the _alien thing_, Michael. But I’m concerned about something else you said. Just how much have you been vomiting?”

Michael says grudgingly, “Like five times a day.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know, three weeks?” 

Kyle writes something down on his clipboard, apparently out of habit, then frowns and crosses it out. “Okay, so you’re severely dehydrated because of persistent vomiting.” He checks Michael’s I.V. bag. “I’m going to keep you on intravenous fluids for the next few hours—that should help with the fainting. Has this ever happened to you before?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea what triggered it?”

“You mean other than my life being shit, like I said?”

Kyle writes something else down. “Do you mind if I do a physical examination?”

“Whatever.”

“I need your explicit verbal consent, Michael.”

“Okay fine, Jesus, you can examine me!”

Kyle takes his temperature and frowns at the thermometer. “According to this, you have a fever.”

“What does it say?” Michael asks. He tries to reach for it, but he’s brought up short by the I.V.

Kyle hands it to him. “A hundred point two.”

Michael shakes his head. “No, that’s normal.” A flash of Alex smiling, saying, _You do run hot, Guerin_.

“See, this is the problem,” says Kyle, shining a light into Michael’s ears. “I have no idea what you’re supposed to look like when you’re healthy, so it’s going to be hard to figure out what exactly is wrong with you. I wish I had Liz’s notes on Max and Isobel. Or even just Isobel to use as a baseline. Are you sure you don’t want me to call her?”

“Don’t call Isobel!” Michael lets Kyle role up his sleeve for the blood pressure cuff. “You’re forgetting that I helped Liz with that research, and also that I’m way smarter than you. If you have a question, just ask me.”

“Oh yeah, genius boy? And what happens if you pass out again? Who am I going to ask then? Open up.” Kyle shoves a tongue depressor in Michael’s mouth. “Well, this looks normal as far as I can tell.”

Michael spits out the tongue depressor. “Look, I probably just need like, rest and a Xanax. Give me some pills or something to stop the vomiting and let me go home.”

“How am I supposed to tell if anti-emetics designed for humans even work on you? And what if I send you home and it turns out that you have alien cancer or something?” He pulls up Michael’s shirt. “I’m going to palpate your abdomen now.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “I don’t have alien cancer.”

“How do you know? You could have like five types of alien cancer and have no idea. Does this hurt?”

“No. And cancer doesn’t make people suddenly start throwing up constantly.”

“Dude, if I’ve learned anything as a surgeon, it’s that cancer can cause basically anything. If you have a tumor putting pressure on your vagus nerve, it can absolutely cause vomiting. Does this hurt?”

“No. You have terrible bedside manner. Doesn’t it freak your patients out when you say shit like that?”

“Sometimes patients need to be freaked out, especially when they’re trying to do dumb stuff like leave the hospital against their doctor’s orders.” Kyle presses down on Michael’s abdomen just above his pubic bone. “Huh.”

Michael squirms. “What?”

“There’s something here. It feels like a mass.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake Kyle, I don’t have cancer!”

Kyle does his concerned doctor-y eyebrows thing. “Well, can you explain to me why you have a mass in your lower abdomen, then?”

“Dude, I don’t know. Stop pressing on it, it feels weird.”

“I’m just going to do an ultrasound, if that’s all right with you.”

He leaves to get the ultrasound machine, and Michael lies there feeling gross and wondering if he’ll end up puking all over Kyle like he did with Brad. That would be satisfying.

Kyle comes back and squirts gel all over Michael’s stomach.

Michael yelps. “Fuck, that’s cold! Warn a guy, will you?”

Kyle ignores him and starts going over his abdomen with the ultrasound wand. After about thirty second of Kyle staring at the screen in confused silence, Michael cranes his neck to try to see what he’s looking at it. “Okay, so what is it? Do I have cancer?”

Kyle is making the same face he did when Alex tried to explain the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek to him. “Um...I don’t actually recognize half these organs.”

Michael groans and flops back on the pillows. “Oh my God! How did you pass medical school? I can’t believe they actually let you near patients with a scalpel!”

“No, I mean you have _extra organs _that humans don’t have! Like this thing next to what I assume is your liver. What the hell is that? God, I wish Liz was here.” 

“Are you sure you’re not just misidentifying my pancreas, doctor dumbass?”

“That’s not a pancreas!” Kyle is starting to look a little hysterical. “I’m not sure you even have a pancreas! Did you know you have extra organs?”

“No! How would I know that?”

“Well I guess you’re not such an expert on your own biology after all—holy _shit_!”

“What?”

Kyle is staring at the ultrasound image like someone just hit him in the head with an ice pick.

Michael struggles up on his elbows. “Dude, you can’t just say something like that and then not explain. What’s going on?”

Kyle slowly points at the middle of the screen. “I think that’s a fetus.”

***

It takes Kyle almost ten minutes to convince Michael he’s not joking.

“Is this because of the gay thing? Because you’re an asshole and it’s not funny.” 

“No, it’s not because of the gay thing. God, you’re never going to let me live down high school, are you? Look, right here. It’s been a while since I did my O.B. rotation, but I’m like 98% percent sure this is a twelve-week-old human fetus. Or some bizarre alien organ that looks exactly like a human fetus. But since it’s inside what appears to be a normal human uterus with associated ovaries and fallopian tubes, I’d guess it probably actually is a fetus? But who the fuck knows! I’m in way over my head here!”

Michael stares at him. “Are you saying I’m _pregnant_?”

Kyle throws his hands up in the air. “Yeah? I guess so?”

“But I’m a _guy_, Kyle! How can I be pregnant?”

“Well, you appear to have a fully functioning set of female reproductive organs—or, I mean, like, the kind of reproductive organs that are associated with a double X-chromosome in humans, so I’d assume that you probably became pregnant when semen was introduced into your reproductive tract—”

“Jesus Christ, Kyle!” says Michael. He could have happily lived the rest of his life without ever hearing Kyle Valenti say the words “semen” and “reproductive tract.”

Kyle’s eyes widen. “Have you been having unprotected sex?”

“Oh my God, I am not having this conversation with you!”

“Michael, when you have unprotected sex, you put yourself and your sexual partners at risk for H.I.V., hepatitis B and C, herpes, syphilis—”

“Those are all human diseases. I don’t catch human diseases.”

Kyle now looks totally horrified. “You may be asymptomatic, but how do you know you’re not a carrier? You could have been spreading some mutant form of alien hepatitis all over Roswell!”

“‘All over Roswell?’ Are you trying to slut-shame me, Kyle? That’s real professional of you.” Not that Michael isn’t a slut, because he definitely is. But Kyle seems like the kind of performatively woke asshat who gets worried about things like being accused of slut-shaming. 

“I am _having-casual-sex-with-no-condom_-shaming you! Did you fail high school health class?” Kyle waves his hands in the air. “Oh my God, and what about pregnancy? Have you impregnated someone with an alien baby? Are there tiny little Michaels with telekinetic powers running around that we have to worry about now?”

“I haven’t impregnated anyone, Kyle, calm down!”

“How do you know?” demands Kyle, gesturing dramatically at the screen. “Cleary it’s possible!” 

“Look, I use condoms when I have sex with girls, okay! It’s easier than trying to explain that I can’t catch chlamydia because I’m an alien.”

Kyle crosses his arms. “And what about when you have sex with guys?”

Michael looks down and scrunches himself back against his pillow, unconsciously picking at the sheets with one hand. “Alex is the only guy.”

“So you had unprotected sex with Alex?” Kyle groans and puts his head in his hands. “Oh God, I’m going to have to have this talk with him too.”

“I had unprotected sex with Alex _one time_!” snaps Michael. “And if you tell him about this, I swear to God I will fucking kill you!”

“All right! All right!” Kyle holds up his hands. “I won’t tell Alex! Legally I _can’t_ tell him, actually, unless you give me permission, because of doctor-patient confidentiality.”

Michael snorts. “Oh good, I can sue you for malpractice if you tell anyone about my alien pregnancy. That makes me feel _so _much better.”

“Hey, just because you’re an alien doesn’t mean I don’t take the Hippocratic oath seriously.” Kyle stares at the screen. “Wait—twelve weeks ago. Weren’t you and Alex broken up then?”

Michael suppresses a surge of irritation at this evidence that Alex has talked to Kyle about what he and Michael had or had not been doing together before he left Roswell. “It was the day we went to Caulfield.”

“What? But I was with you guys the whole time! When did you have time to—oh.” Kyle’s face is comically dismayed. “It was when we stopped for gas on the way back, wasn’t it? And you went to the bathroom, and you were gone a really long time, and he went to check on you, and then you were both gone even longer—” he cuts himself off, looking mortified. “Okay this is really none of my business.”

“No, it isn’t,” says Michael through gritted teeth.

“Nope, you’re right. I’ll shut up now.” Kyle makes a visible effort to get a hold of himself. “Well, the good news is, I think we’ve figured out why you’re throwing up.”

“Why, because I’m pregnant?”

“Well ideally I’d like to do some bloodwork and take some other samples to rule out other causes—”

“No fucking samples!” Michael interrupts.

“Yeah, great, okay! I get that!” says Kyle. “I’ll take your word for it that you can’t catch human diseases and you don’t like, have meningitis or whatever. There’s a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum that’s characterized by excessive vomiting during pregnancy. If you were a human, that’s what I’d diagnose you with.”

“Awesome,” says Michael, only slightly sarcastically. “And if I were a human, how would you treat me?”

“I’d give you anti-emetics and prescribe fluids and a bland diet.”

“Okay, great. Do that and let me go home. This fucking hospital is giving me hives.”

“Well...” Kyle looks uncomfortable. “I can give you prochlorperazine for the nausea, but that won’t take care of the underlying problem.” Michael looks confused, and Kyle says, “I mean, the pregnancy. You’ll still be pregnant.”

Michael groans and pulls the pillow over his head. “God, this is so fucked up.”

“You know, you’re not the first guy to be in this situation,” says Kyle. “There are lots of trans men and intersex men who have uteruses, and some of them get pregnant. There are probably even like, internet support groups for it.” He appears to think this will cheer Michael up.

“Yeah, I get it Kyle, you’re down with the LGBT community and whatever. I don’t care. What the fuck am I going to do?”

“Well, if you decide that you don’t want to, um, keep the pregnancy, I could probably give you an abortion.”

Michael is just about to ask what the fuck Kyle means by “keep the pregnancy” when he hears a familiar voice echoing down the hospital corridor outside.

“Michael! Kyle! Where are you? Michael?”

“Oh shit,” he moans, hugging the pillow over his stomach like he’s trying to hide the evidence. “It’s Maria!”

“Michael!” Maria barges into the room, looking pissed as hell. “What happened? Why didn’t you call me and tell me you were in the hospital?”

“I—what?” says Michael, staring at her. “How did you even know I was here?”

“Brad came into the Pony after his shift ended. I knew you were sick! This is why adults go to the doctor when they don’t feel well instead of ignoring it and fucking _passing out at work_! What’s wrong with him, Kyle?”

“Um,” says Kyle, who is clearly low-key panicking.

“I’m fine, Maria,” says Michael. “I just got dehydrated. Kyle checked me out and he says there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Dehydrated my ass!” says Maria, rounding on Kyle. “Did he tell you he’s been throwing up five times a day?”

“Uh...yes,” says Kyle. “I believe it’s, um, stress-related. I’m going to prescribe him some medication, and hopefully he’ll feel better.”

Maria narrows her eyes. “Stress-related? Really? You’re sure?” Michael hopes she isn’t trying to do her psychic thing, because if so they are definitely fucked.

“In my professional opinion, yes,” says Kyle, trying to hide behind his most doctor-y facial expression.

Maria looks at Kyle, then at Michael, then back at Kyle. “Uh-uh. There’s a weird vibe in here. Something else is going on.”

Kyle shoots Michael a pleading look. Goddamn it, this useless asshole is going to crack under interrogation.

“Nothing’s going on, Maria,” Michael says. “I just opened up to Kyle about how messed up I’m feeling about Max, and...other stuff. Like childhood trauma and my abandonment issues. It made him uncomfortable because he sucks at talking about feelings. It’s kind of a problem, you know, because he’s a doctor. He really needs to work on it.”

Kyle glares at him.

Maria eyes the two of them dubiously. “Yeah, okay. Whatever. Are you sure he’s going to be okay, Kyle? Shouldn’t he see, like, a psychiatrist or something, if stress is making him sick?”

Kyle somehow manages to convince Maria that Michael will be fine without a psychiatrist and gets her to take him home with the promise that they can explore other options if he doesn’t improve in a few days. She fusses over him, trying to make him drink 7-up and Gatorade, and pestering him to take his medicine. Michael is frustrated with her hovering, and then feels bad about being frustrated, because it’s sweet that she’s worried about him.

It’s just that it’s not Maria he wants, as he lies curled around himself in the middle of the night, feeling small and scared and still vaguely nauseated. She’s right there next to him. He could wake her up. She probably wouldn’t even mind. But it wouldn’t help. 

He wants Alex. Wants him helplessly, like a little kid wants his mother. Like he should want the mother he can’t remember. There’s some stupid part of his brain that still thinks of Alex as _safe _and _home_, despite the fucking mountain of evidence to the contrary.

That’s what made him reach for Alex in that gas station bathroom three months ago, with his nerves on fire and his dead family screaming in his head. He’d kissed Alex like he was trying to disappear into him, and Alex had said, _“Wait, Guerin, I don’t think we should—”_ and Michael had held onto him and said, _“Please_.” So Alex, the stupid sap, had given him what he asked for. And the insane thing was, it had worked. For those few minutes when Michael was pressed up against the wall with Alex buried inside him, Alex’s arm around his waist, Alex’s mouth in his hair, Alex murmuring over and over, low and urgent as he thrust into him, _“God_damn_it, don’t you _ever _do that again, Guerin, do you _hear_ me, don’t you _ever _do that again—” _he’d forgotten everything else. His brain had stopped screaming and that little stupid part of him had whispered _safe _and _home _and _loved_. But when they were done, the horror of what had just happened had come crashing back, and he’d slammed out of the bathroom with his jeans unzipped and his shirt half unbuttoned, ignoring Alex’s confused, worried, _“Michael—”_

Alex can’t make anything better. In fact, he usually just ends up making Michael feel like shit. But because Michael is a fucking idiot, he still wants him.

***

Whatever meds Kyle prescribed him do _not _work. Michael throws up at three in the morning, then at five, and then again at seven.

At 7:05 Maria says, “That’s it, I’m taking you back to the hospital.”

“No! I’m fine. Really, I’m fine!” Michael thinks he would probably sound more convincing if he wasn’t lying curled on his side on the bathroom floor, but he feels like he might puke again if he moves.

“You’re not fine. You look like crap.”

“It’s too soon to go back. Maybe the medication just needs more time to kick in. Let’s wait.”

“Kyle said it would start working in an hour.”

“Well, Kyle’s a dumbass. He probably read the label wrong. Or gave me the wrong prescription by mistake.”

Maria shakes her head. “There’s no point in waiting. You’ll just get worse the longer this goes on. Come on, get up. I’ll drive you.”

There is no fucking way Michael is going back to the hospital. “Just call Kyle and ask him if he thinks I should wait.”

“Call Kyle? You just said Kyle was a dumbass.”

“Yeah, but he’s a doctor, right? So we should probably listen to what he says.”

“Or we could go to the hospital and talk to a different doctor, and I won’t have to worry about how I’m going to get you into my car if you pass out again.”

“I don’t want to see another doctor. Kyle’s good. Just call Kyle.”

“Michael, I don’t get it. You _hate _Kyle.”

Michael glares at the cute-but-practical ankle boots Maria’s wearing, because they’re the only thing he can see without moving his head and risking another vomiting episode. “I don’t_ hate _him. He’s fine. We’re fine.” 

“Last month when he came into the Pony you called him a quote “douchenozzle” unquote and tried to get me to spit in his drink.”

“Yeah, but I like, trust his medical opinion.”

“Michael, _what _is going on with you and Kyle? You’re being super weird!”

Michael tries to think of a plausible explanation that isn’t, _Yes, Kyle is absolutely a douchenozzle, but he’s the only doctor I trust not to dissect me. _“I don’t have health insurance. Kyle sort of agreed to treat me under the table. I guess because he feels bad about being such a dick in high school or something.”

Maria groans. “Oh my God, Michael! How can you not have health insurance? That’s really irresponsible!”

Michael agrees that it is definitely really irresponsible and meekly promises to apply for benefits as soon as possible until Maria relents and agrees to call Kyle.

Kyle, it turns out, has just started a twelve hour shift, but he says he’ll come by when he’s done. He doesn’t sound thrilled about it.

“You know,” says Maria, as she hangs up, “Kyle was never a dick to _you _in high school.”

“Huh?” Michael has started to doze off. The cool bathroom tiles are surprisingly comfortable.

“I mean he made Alex’s life hell, but he never bothered you. I think all those football jocks were scared of you. There were these crazy rumors that you’d like, stabbed a guy in an Arby’s parking lot or something.”

“What?” Michael never heard that one.

“Yeah, I know. It’s nuts, right?” Maria sits down next to him with her back against the tub and starts petting his gross, sweaty hair. It feels nice. “Even though I’ve seen you get into probably a hundred bar fights, you’ve never actually really hurt anyone. Like, sure, you’ve punched a lot of guys in the face, but they all walked away afterwards. Most people don’t notice that about you.”

Even Isobel, who’d known him all his life, had been willing to believe for ten years that he’d murdered three people. What Maria’s saying should make him happy, but it doesn’t. Because Maria doesn’t know shit about him. She doesn’t know what he’s done, or who he’s hurt. And if she did know, she’d hate him.

***

By the time Kyle finally arrives, it’s dark outside and Michael has thrown up fifteen more times. He knows the exact number because Maria started writing down all his symptoms in case Kyle asks about them. He’s at the point again where his vision goes sparkly if he tries to sit up and he feels too awful to even sass Maria when she tries to make him drink something or take his temperature.

Kyle looks exhausted. He says, “I’m sorry I’m late. I got stuck in surgery.”

Michael would never say this out loud, but he has to admit it’s pretty decent of Kyle to come take care of his sorry ass when he’s clearly desperate for a shower and eight hours of sleep. He crouches next to the toilet to take Michael’s pulse and listen to his heart and lungs, then hooks him up to an I.V. bag he’s apparently stolen from the hospital.

“Look, buddy,” he says, sitting back on his heels, “I’m getting concerned. Your symptoms are escalating and it’s starting to get dangerous. You’re already severely dehydrated again after just 24 hours. And when was the last time you ate something and kept it down?”

“I don’t know,” Michael rasps. “A few days ago?”

“More like a week,” says Maria. 

“Yeah,” says Kyle. “See, that’s not good. I’m running out of ideas here. Admitting you to the hospital isn’t an option, and there’s only so much I can do for you while I’m treating you on the fly like this. I think it’s time to call Liz.”

“Liz? What can Liz do?” Maria demands. “Why can’t you take him back to the hospital, if he’s that sick?”

Kyle gives Michael a _“How the hell am I supposed to explain this?”_ look.

“I told you. I don’t have health insurance.” Michael tries to push himself into a sitting position in a bid to convince Maria he’s feeling better, but he just ends dry-heaving into the bathmat.

Maria wraps her hand around his upper arm, squeezing tight. Her voice is tense and worried. “I’m not going to let you _die_ because you don’t have health insurance! If money’s an issue, I’ll help you pay.”

_I am such an asshole_, thinks Michael.

Kyle jumps in, obviously feeling like it’s on him to rescue the situation, since Michael is fucking useless right now. “I’m not sure the hospital would actually be that helpful,” he babbles. “Michael has, uh, a genetic condition. It’s rare. Like, really rare. All the treatments are pretty experimental. I don’t think the other doctors could do anything for him. But Liz happens to be pretty much the world expert on it. This genetic condition. That Michael has.”

Maria’s expression is a weird combination of suspicious and hurt. “What genetic condition? Michael, why didn’t you tell me?”

Michael glares at Kyle and croaks out, “I, um, don’t like to talk about it?”

“But you told _Kyle _about it and not me?”

“Believe me, _I_ did not tell Kyle.”

“Liz told me,” says Kyle helpfully.

Michael hisses, _“Shut the fuck up, Kyle_,” under his breath.

“Liz, huh?” Maria narrows her eyes. “Fine. I’m calling her.”

“Wait—” says Michael, but she’s already dialing.

A sick sense of inevitability settles over Michael as Maria says, “Hi Liz...I’m good, how’s San Diego?....Good, good. Listen, Michael’s sick and Kyle said I should call you...I don’t know. He’s been throwing up a lot. Kyle says it’s related to that genetic condition he has?”

“Dude, I’m so sorry,” whispers Kyle, frantically typing on his phone. “I’m texting Liz right now not to say anything—_shit _it’s not sending. I don’t have any reception in here!”

Maria pauses at something Liz has just said, her eyebrows going up. “What do you mean, _‘what genetic condition’_? Kyle said you know all about it. He said you’re like the world expert in it or something.”

“_Fuck_,” moans Michael softly.

Kyle puts his head in his hands.

Liz says something else and Maria frowns. “The alien thing? What alien thing?”

***

It’s not the worst breakup he’s ever had, but that’s only because his worst breakup involved Jesse Manes and a hammer.

“I mean, I get why she’s upset,” says Kyle, “but I think it was a dick move to kick you out of her house when you can barely stand up.” He’s got Michael’s arm around his shoulders and is half-carrying him down the sidewalk to his car while trying to juggle the I.V. stand and the trash bag of Michael’s stuff that Maria threw out the door after them.

“I think Rosa was the last straw,” gasps Michael. He feels like he’s about five seconds away from losing consciousness. He has to lean all his weight on Kyle to stay on his feet. “She’s not going to forgive me for covering up her best friend’s murder.”

Kyle sighs. “Yeah, maybe so. But still! This feels pretty cruel and unusual.”

Michael had expected her to scream and throw things. Maybe take a swing at him. Instead she’d just gone...cold. And silent. Like a door slamming and leaving him outside in the snow, unable to get back in where it was warm and safe. He’s glad she threw him out. He couldn’t stand for her to look at him like that anymore.

He pukes twice in Kyle’s car, but he feels too horrible to get any satisfaction out of it. Kyle is really nice about it, which is annoying. It’s only when Kyle parks and opens his door to help him get out that Michael realizes Kyle hasn’t taken him back to the junkyard. “Where are we?” he slurs, as Kyle tries to manhandle him to his feet.

“We’re at my apartment,” says Kyle. After several unsuccessful attempts to get Michael to stand up, he resorts to wrapping his arms around Michael’s torso and hauling him out of his seat. If it were any other guy, it would be kind of hot that he can just toss Michael around like that, but it’s Kyle, so _ew_.

“Why are we at your apartment?”

“Did you think I was just going to abandon you on the side of the road?” Kyle eyes the flight of cement stairs in front of him, then looks at Michael, who is only being kept upright because he’s propped between Kyle and the car. After a second he mutters, _“fuck it,” _then picks Michael up I.V. and all and starts goddamn _bridal-carrying _him up the stairs.

“Jesus, put me down!” Michael flails weakly. “I don’t need this! Just take me back to my trailer!”

“Stop that!” Kyle tightens his hold on him. “There’s no way I’m leaving you alone. You need medical supervision, and since you can’t go to the hospital, this is the best I can do.” He carries Michael into his apartment and lays him down on the couch.

“Why are you doing this?” Michael mumbles. His whole body hurts and the room is spinning. He stares up at Kyle’s ceiling. It has water damage. He should get his pipes checked.

Kyle kneels down and starts taking off Michael’s shoes. “Because I’m a doctor, and you need help.”

“I still don’t like you,” says Michael. He’s so tired.

Kyle snorts. “I don’t like you either. But Alex does, and I owe him. So. You’re stuck with me.”

_Fucking Alex_, Michael thinks, and slides down into unconsciousness.

***

He dreams about his mother. She’s calling his name, but the name isn’t Michael. It’s the name she gave him, eighty years ago on another world. In the dream, he remembers what it is, but when he wakes up, it’s gone.

***

Liz shows up at noon the next day with Rosa and a car full of stolen lab equipment.

She looks...good. Put together. Definitely not like her heart has been ripped out of her chest and shredded, like he’s felt for the last three months. He knows that’s just because Liz’s response to trauma is to bottle all her feelings up and pretend she doesn’t have them. It doesn’t mean that Max’s death didn’t affect her, he tells himself. But he can’t help resenting her for it, a little.

When she sees him, she says, “Holy crap, you look terrible.”

“Thanks,” he mutters. He feels terrible. Kyle tried a new anti-nausea med on him when he woke up and then made him eat a bowl of applesauce. He’d promptly puked it up all over his jeans. He’s now wearing a pair of Kyle’s sweatpants, which is the worst. He doesn’t even think they’re clean. On the plus side, Kyle gave up trying to make him eat or drink and put him on a permanent I.V. drip, so he’s back to just throwing up tiny amounts of bile every hour or so. He has to take what he can get. 

“Look, Michael, I’m really sorry I told Maria you were an alien.”

Michael does not want to get into this. “It’s fine. Whatever.”

Liz bites her lip. “It’s just that I honestly thought she knew already.”

“Why would you think that? You didn’t tell her either.”

“Yeah, but you’ve been living with her for three months. I kind of figured it would have come up.”

“Well if you’d called anytime in the last three months, you’d know it hadn’t!s”

She grimaces. “Okay, yeah, I’m a shitty friend. To you _and _Maria. But you’re still a shitty boyfriend! She’s _really _pissed at you.”

Michael sighs. “I know.”

Rosa is hovering behind Liz in the doorway. She’s apparently decided the best way to disguise herself from the townsfolk of Roswell is to dye her hair blond, chop most of it off, and spike it up in an aggressive alternative lifestyle haircut. She’s also wearing an enormous pair of purple hipster glasses.

She gives Michael a little wave and says, “Hi, I’m Liz’s cousin Helena Ortecho. We have never met before. You definitely didn’t go to high school with me, witness my death, and then frame me for vehicular manslaughter.”

Michael is really unsure of the etiquette of this situation. “Um...I’m sorry about that. About you getting murdered, and...the rest of it. I didn’t think about how it would look, to put you in the driver’s seat.”

She shrugs. “You were a dumbass and you panicked. I’ve been there.” She goes over to the kitchen table and starts fiddling with her phone.

Liz turns to Kyle. “So where are those ultrasound scans you promised me? When you told me what was going on over the phone, I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced you weren’t yanking my chain.”

“Believe me,” says Kyle, “I really wish I was yanking your chain.”

Liz is _way _too excited about getting a closer look at Michael’s jacked up insides. She spreads all the pictures out on the living room floor and starts frantically scribbling notes.

“You were right, Kyle, he has two completely separate sets of functioning sexual organs!”

Kyle grimaces at Michael and mouths, _“Sorry, dude.” _

Liz doesn’t notice. “I was wondering how he managed to go twenty years without noticing any of this, but now I see. The vagina’s completely hidden inside the body. This anatomy is similar to what we see in women with cloacal malformation, only the urethra’s not involved, and it’s obviously not a birth defect. I bet he could even give birth naturally! Look at the shape of his pelvis here—” She gestures at the grey blobs in one of the scans. “It’s effect on the way he stands and walks is really subtle. In fact, I don’t think I’d have paid any attention to it if I hadn’t seen this...”

Michael wants to dive out the window, or maybe just disappear. He feels weird and exposed, like Liz has peeled off his skin and is poking her fingers inside him. He knows she means well, but this is way too similar to his nightmares about being vivisected by scientists.

“Liz, you’re freaking him out,” says Rosa. “Stop it.”

“Huh?” says Liz, turning around.

Rosa rolls her eyes. “How would you like it if someone started talking about how weird your vagina is in a room full of random people? It’s not classy behavior.”

Michael looks over at her, surprised that she would notice—let alone care—how he’s feeling, but she’s gone back to her phone.

“My vagina is not weird!” says Liz, and then winces because she’s the older sister now and that’s the most younger-sister thing she’s said in a while. “Okay, I take your point. I’m sorry, Michael. It’s just—science like this doesn’t come along very often! It’s awesome! You’re awesome! But I’ll shut up about it. Let’s focus on the baby. Kyle, how’s the baby?”

“Uh...it seems fine,” says Kyle. “Like I said on the phone, it looks like a completely normal 12-week-old human fetus. Except that it’s half alien and has two dads, and I have no idea how to explain any of that genetically.”

“God, I’m so mad I’m never going to be able to publish any of this,” Liz mutters, taking out her laptop. “This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. Clearly the alien DNA is somehow able to recombine with human DNA across the species barrier.” She starts pulling up files. “Do you think that’s what’s making him sick? Some sort of immune response to the baby’s human DNA?”

“Uh...” says Kyle.

“Why are you asking him?” says Michael. “I’m the one who helped you with all your alien research.”

“God, yes, you’re right,” says Liz, turning to Michael. “You’re right here. We shouldn’t be talking over you.”

“Also I’m smarter than Kyle.”

Liz smiles. “Yes, okay, you’re smarter than Kyle. I have some ideas of tests I can run on you. I still have a lot of the data I collected on the three of you here, minus what got destroyed in the lab fire. Don’t worry,” she says, when he shoots a disturbed look at her laptop. “It’s encrypted. But I’m not sure that’s our best option.”

“What do you mean?” Michael demands. “How can you figure out how to fix this if you don’t do any tests?”

Liz looks uncomfortable. “I mean...that while I’m busy trying to figure out what’s wrong with you, you’re going to keep having these symptoms. And maybe develop new ones. Kyle said that you couldn’t stand up yesterday before he put you back on the I.V. That’s...scary. I think our safest option right now would be to terminate the pregnancy immediately, if you’re not interested in keeping it.”

_Terminate the pregnancy_. Kyle had said that too. So far, Michael has been in deep denial about the pregnancy even existing. He’s been subconsciously thinking about this as just some weird glitch in his biology that needs adjusting.

But it’s not. _Obviously not a birth defect_, Liz had said. This is apparently...normal. Something his body is designed to do.

If he were a woman, he would probably have already put some thought into what he would do in this situation. It’s just occurring to him now that he’s going to have to make a decision.

“Which one is the picture of the baby?” he asks.

“Here.” Kyle hands him one of the grey blobs.

Michael stares at it. It’s actually...pretty easy to tell that it’s a baby now that he knows what he’s looking at. It’s got a head and arms and legs. And it’s inside him, which is _so _weird. He looks up at Kyle. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

Kyle shrugs. “It’s usually too soon to tell at this stage.”

Michael looks back at the baby. “But you said it’s healthy, right?” It’s lying on its back with one arm up by its head and its legs in the air. It’s...cute. Out of nowhere, the thought comes into his head, _Alex and I made this_. It makes him feel hot and shivery in a way he doesn’t want to analyze.

“I mean, as far as I can tell?” says Kyle. “We’ll know more once Liz does some bloodwork on you.”

The idea of this thing floating inside him like a little parasite that’s going to feed on his blood and grow and make his stomach huge and then get squeezed out of—what? His ass? Is deeply disturbing.

But it’s also..._his baby_.

“I don’t...want to terminate,” he says slowly.

“Are you sure, Michael?” says Liz. “We don’t know how bad this is going to get.”

He nods. “Yeah. I’m sure.” His mom shoved him into that pod in 1947 because she wanted him to have a chance. This kid deserves a chance too.

He expects Liz to argue with him, but she surprises him by reaching out and touching his arm. “Okay. If that’s what you want, I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

She looks at him with her giant Disney princess eyes, and he realizes she means it. He knows it’s just because she thinks it’s what Max would want, but it makes him feel a little better anyway.

She says, “We can start by trying to alleviate your symptoms. Do you have any ideas, Kyle?”

Kyle spreads his hands. “The anti-emetics I’ve tried on him don’t seem to have done much. The glucose drip is keeping him hydrated and giving him some nutrition, but it’s not a long-term solution. The next step would be to figure out what’s causing the vomiting and try to treat the root cause rather than the symptoms.”

“All right,” says Liz, in the tone that means she’s about to go kick science’s ass. “Let’s do that.”

“Uh, there’s one more thing,” says Kyle, looking embarrassed. “I have to go back to work tomorrow. I called in sick today, but the chief resident is going to have my ass if I don’t go back in. We’re short-staffed because one of the other residents is on maternity leave...” He rubs the back of his neck. “Anyway, Michael needs someone to stay with him during the day. And you can’t do it if you’re in the lab, so...”

“Why don’t we just call Isobel?” says Liz. “Where _is _Isobel, anyway?”

“Don’t call Isobel,” says Michael.

Liz frowns, confused. “Why not?”

“We kind of...had a fight. After Max died. We’re not talking.”

Max’s name makes Liz flinch a little. It’s subtle, but Michael notices. “What happened?”

“She thought I wasn’t trying to do enough to bring Max back. She got upset and...said some things.”

“Bring Max _back_?”

“Yeah, she’s obsessed with the idea that since Rosa came back, Max can too. Never mind that Max fucking _killed himself _to do it.”

“Shit.” Liz sighs. “Okay, well, unfortunately we don’t have a lot of choice here. I mean, I guess Rosa could stay with you...”

“No, Rosa couldn’t,” says Rosa. She gets up and heads for the door. “I am definitely not going to spend my first night back in Roswell cleaning up Michael Guerin’s puke. I’m going to the Wild Pony. Don’t wait up.”

“Rosa—”

“Bye!” Rosa blows a kiss and slams the door.

“Fuck,” Liz mutters, massaging her temples. “Okay. Well then I guess we’re calling Isobel.”

Isobel does not answer her phone. Michael is secretly grateful.

“Sorry, Kyle,” says Liz. “It looks like you have to call in sick again tomorrow.”

“You could just leave me here,” says Michael. “Really, I’m fine by myself.”

“Absolutely not!” snaps Kyle. “I had to peel you off of Maria’s bathroom floor last night. What if you fall again and you can’t get up? What if you aspirate your own vomit? I’m not coming home to find you dead in the hallway!”

“Jesus, okay,” Michael mutters.

***

He dreams about his mother again, but it’s different this time. He realizes slowly that in this dream, he _is _his mother. She’s nursing a baby. He feels it’s little mouth tugging on his nipple. He feels what she feels, as she holds this baby in her arms, a love so intense it’s like he’s drowning in it. He’d do anything to keep it safe, even kill. Even die. But it’s not his baby, it’s hers. It’s _him_.

***

Michael is woken up by someone pounding on the door. “What the fuck?” he mutters, flailing at the blankets tangled around him on the sofa bed. He peers at his phone. It’s two in the goddamn morning.

Kyle skids into the living room in his boxers carrying a fucking _loaded gun_.

“Jesus Christ, why do you have that?” Michael hisses.

“Because I put Jesse Manes in the hospital three months ago and no one’s heard from him since,” Kyle hisses back. “If he comes for me, I’m going to be ready for him.”

“_You _put Jesse Manes in the hospital?” says Michael, shocked and grudgingly impressed.

“Kyle! Let me in!” says the person outside.

Michael freezes.

“Oh, it’s you,” says Kyle, and opens the door.

It’s Alex.


	2. Chapter 2

Alex looks wrecked, strung out and exhausted with puffy eyes and messy hair. He’s got a duffle bag slung over one shoulder and a guitar case over the other, and he’s wearing a black hoodie that’s too big for him. It makes him seem younger, somehow. Softer and more touchable. Michael’s dumb heart stars flip-flopping around in his chest, because he’s a stupid piece of shit who hasn’t learned his fucking lesson by now. 

“Guerin,” Alex breaths, sounding relieved. “How are you? Are you okay?”

Michael glares at Kyle. “What the fuck is he doing here? I told you not to tell him! Is this because you didn’t want to miss that stupid bowel obstruction surgery you kept talking about? You thought you’d take care of the problem by getting Alex to come babysit me? What the hell happened to all that shit you said about doctor-patient confidentiality?”

“It wasn’t him,” says Alex. His voice is quiet and firm, cutting through Michael’s tirade. “Liz called me. She told me what happened. She said you needed help.”

“Well, I don’t!” yells Michael, his voice cracking. “So you can just go back to wherever you’ve been this whole time and leave me alone!”

Alex flinches, and Michael hates himself. “Guerin—”

“Look, can we all calm down for a second?” says Kyle, holding up his hands. “Michael, I’m sorry, but we absolutely need his help. You need 24/7 care, and if I keep missing this many surgeries, I’m going to fail my board exams. So can we just talk about this?”

“No!” Michael’s shaking, and his chest feels tight and hot. “Look, I didn’t ask you to take care of me, Kyle! If you don’t want to, that’s fine, but don’t act like I have to do this because I’m such a big inconvenience for you or something!”

Kyle looks upset. “Michael, that’s not what I meant—”

“I don’t care! I’ll just go, all right? I’ll get out of your hair!” He tries to stand up, but then everything goes fuzzy and suddenly he’s on the floor staring up at Kyle’s gross ceiling. Pain spikes in the back of his hand and he realizes he pulled out his I.V. drip when he fell over. There’s blood running down over his wrist.

“Shit!” Kyle rushes over and crouches next to him, reaching out to put pressure on his hand where he’s bleeding. “Michael, did you hit your head?”

“Get off me!” Michael tries to push him away, but the nausea slams into him when he moves and he rolls over and retches violently. “_Fuck_,” he whispers, pressing his forehead against the carpet.

“Maybe I should go,” says Alex, sounding wretched. “I’m just making things worse.”

“Yeah, just go,” Michael snarls, refusing to look at him. “It’s what you’re good at!”

Alex stills. There’s a long silence. Then he says, “What do you mean by that?”

Michael rolls onto his back and glares up at him. “You know what I mean!”

“No, I don’t!” says Alex. And...oh. He’s _pissed_. “You told me to go!”

Michael can’t believe this. “I didn’t tell you to _disappear_! I didn’t tell you to leave the fucking _state_!”

“You told me I was forcing you to relive the death of your family! I said I was all in for you, that I wanted us to be together, and you said that just being around me was _causing you trauma_. What did you expect me to do?”

“Well, I guess I made the right call, because you sure didn’t stick around to make sure I was okay! Not that I should have thought you would, since you _never do._” 

There’s another long pause. Then Alex says, “Fine.” He drops his stuff on the floor and starts walking towards Michael. “You’re mad at me for leaving? Then I won’t leave. I’m staying.”

“I don’t want you to stay!” says Michael, trying to scoot away as Alex kneels down next to him. “What are you doing?”

Alex grabs his wrists and pins them to the floor on either side of his head. “I’m showing you I mean it.”

“Whoa, dude!” says Kyle.

“Let go!” Michael gasps, but he doesn’t try to push him away. Alex is so close. His hands on Michael are firm, not letting him get away with anything, but gentle, not hurting him. The warmth of his body, his smell, make Michael’s spine melt in a helpless Pavlovian response.

“No,” says Alex calmly, in his Air Force captain I-am-in-control-here voice. “You need to listen to me, Guerin. You’re pissed at me. I get it. I’m pissed at you too. We’ve both done some shitty things to each other. But I meant it when I said you were my family. I’m not going anywhere. So you can just shut up and let me help you.”

Michael tries to rally. “I don’t need your help!”

“You are literally lying in a pool of your own vomit.”

“Um, Alex?” says Kyle. “Do you think you could maybe chill out a little? It’s kind of messed up to pin a sick guy to the floor when he’s explicitly asked you to let go of him.”

Alex ignores him. “Guerin, are you going to let us help you, or are you going to keep throwing a tantrum and making yourself sicker?”

Michael can admit he’s lost this battle. “_Fine_,” he says through gritted teeth.

“Okay.” Alex releases him and straightens up, reaching out to the sofa bed for balance as he puts his full weight on his knees. “Kyle? A little help here?”

Kyle reaches for Alex’s elbow, but Alex shakes his head. “No, help _him_. I’m fine.” He slowly levers himself to his feet.

Kyle gets Michael back onto the sofa bed and bandages his hand. He has to stick the I.V. back in his other hand, so Michael is basically now zero for two in the hand department.

Alex frowns down at him. “You have puke in your hair.”

“I hate you,” Michael mutters. They both know he’s a fucking liar. 

Alex looks at Kyle. “Is there any way to wash his hair while he’s in bed?”

“Um, I think so? But you need like a special basin or something. I don’t know, the nurses handle that stuff at the hospital.”

Alex crosses his arms and assesses the situation. “Well, then I guess we have to figure out how to get him into the bathtub.”

Michael groans. “God, do we have to?”

“Do you _want _to go to sleep with puke in your hair? No? Then stop whining. Come on, Kyle.”

Kyle looks grumpy about being ordered around, but he picks Michael up and carries him into the bathroom. Alex follows after them with the I.V. stand.

Having to get naked in front of his ex and his ex’s douchebag friend is definitely very awkward, but at least Kyle’s presence kills any potential sexy vibes. Well, that and the vomit. And once Michael sinks down into the hot water he has to admit it’s worth it. He was starting to feel _disgusting_.

Then he looks up and sees that Kyle and Alex are still hovering awkwardly.

He raises his eyebrows at them. “You guys can go,” he says. “I can take it from here.”

“Um, actually, Michael,” says Kyle, looking very uncomfortable, “you really shouldn’t get either of your hands wet right now. So one of us is going to have to...wash you.” 

“Wait, are you fucking kidding me?” Just when he thought the night couldn’t get any worse. “No. No way. I’ll just sit here for a while and, like, duck my head down under the water a few times. We definitely don’t need to re-enact some kind of gay porn bathhouse threesome.”

Kyle winces and rubs his forehead. “Can you please not talk about porn when you’re naked and I’m in my underwear? This is awkward enough as it is. Especially if I’m going to have to wash your hair.”

Michael jumps on this. “I’m sorry, is thinking about gay sex making you uncomfortable?”

“This may be news to you, Michael, but I don’t actually want to think about you having sex ever, in any context! It’s bad enough that I’ve somehow become your gynecologist!”

Alex sighs. “I’ll do it.” He gets down on his knees by the bathtub and starts rolling up his sleeves.

“What? No!” Michael yelps, jerking away.

Alex ignores the water that splashes down the front of his shirt and says with irritating calm, “Guerin, either I do it, or Kyle does it. Those are your only two options. Do you want Kyle?”

There is no fucking way Michael is going to voluntarily choose to have Kyle wash his hair. “...No,” he mutters sulkily. 

But he pretty quickly realizes what a huge mistake he’s made when Alex is tipping his head back and pouring water over his scalp, and then Alex’s hands are _in his hair_, rubbing shampoo through his curls, and _oh _it’s good. He thinks he might make some kind of embarrassing, involuntary noise. Under any other circumstances, he’d be hard instantly, even with Kyle crammed into the bathroom with them as the world’s most ineffectual cock-block. As terrible as he feels, his dick still manages to twitch a little in interest. This is why he can’t let Alex touch him, he thinks, because as soon as he does he forgets why it’s a bad idea and just wants _more_, like a fucking junkie craving heroin.

“You know, that’s really the wrong kind of shampoo for hair like his,” says Kyle, breaking through Michael’s blissed-out haze. “With curly hair, you need a shampoo that’s going to lock in the moisture. Otherwise it gets dehydrated too easily.”

Alex snorts. “I can’t believe you’re the same guy who used to make fun of me for wearing eyeliner.” He tips Michael back again so he can pour more water over his head.

“I know, man, it was a dark time. I thought conditioner was for girls, and I used way too much Axe body spray. It was gross.”

Alex laughs. “Yeah, Liz used to complain about the way you smelled.”

“What? Seriously? No, she didn’t!”

“Yep, she said you smelled like a locker room, like, all the time.”

Hearing Alex and Kyle banter like this, like they like each other, makes Michael’s heart feel all weird and squeezed. It’s jealousy, he realizes. Not that he thinks anything sexual would ever happen between them. That’s just it, actually. They’re friends. Alex and Kyle are friends, and Alex and Michael are not. They’re good at fucking. They’ve always been good at fucking. But they’re not good at anything else. 

“I’m tired,” he says abruptly. “I want to go back to bed.”

***

Later, when they’ve put him to bed like a fucking baby and left him alone in the dark living room, he hears them talking quietly in the kitchen. They probably think he’s asleep.

“Look, I have to say something, man,” says Kyle. “That thing where you pinned him to the floor was uncomfortable. It made me very uncomfortable. From like, a consent perspective.”

Alex’s voice when he answers is tired. “Yeah, it didn’t feel great. But I didn’t really know what else to do. I couldn’t help him if he wouldn’t let me touch him. So I made a tactical decision and it paid off. If he’d thrown me across the room, I’d have left.”

Michael hates when Alex says shit like “tactical decision.” He hates even more that Alex apparently thinks of him as something he needs to make tactical decisions about, like they’re in a war and Michael’s the enemy.

Kyle says, “Thrown you across the room? What—oh. With his mind powers. Shit, I forgot about that.”

Of course he did, because Kyle’s a moron. But the infuriating thing is that Michael had kind of forgotten about it too. Usually when someone gets physical with him, his first instinct is to go full poltergeist. He never does, because his second, nearly simultaneous instinct is to shut that shit down with extreme prejudice, thanks to having the crap beaten out of him as a kid every time he accidentally levitated something. But it hadn’t even occurred to him to use his powers on Alex, because his stupid brain is apparently incapable of experiencing Alex as a threat. Instead, being grabbed by Alex triggers...a whole other set of responses.

Michael is so fucked.

In the kitchen, Kyle is saying, “Hey, are you all right, man? You don’t look so good.”

“I’m fine,” says Alex, but he sounds brittle and strained. “It’s just...a lot.”

Michael knows how to interpret that. It means _he’s _a lot.

“Yeah, definitely,” says Kyle. “I get it. Why don’t you come lie down? You look like you could use some sleep. Here, you can take my bed.”

“You don’t have to give me your bed, Kyle. It’s big enough for two people. I don’t mind sharing if you don’t.”

“Oh, yeah, I definitely don’t either,” says Kyle. “I was just, you know, trying to be polite. It wasn’t, like, a homophobic thing or anything...”

Alex laughs. “Shut up, Kyle.”

Their voices fade as they go into the bedroom.

Michael presses his face into the pillow. Fucking Kyle. He shouldn’t feel bereft, but he does. Alex has slept in his bed exactly one time, and he still remembers in vivid detail what it felt like to wake up next to him, all of his skin warm and right there, his face soft and open.

He shouldn’t want that again. He shouldn’t.

***

Michael dreams that he’s giving birth, but once again, he’s not himself. His hair is long and straight where it falls down over his eyes, and when he reaches up to push it back, he sees that his hand is slender and feminine. The room he’s in has white walls and huge, sunny windows. Outside he can see blue water and an aquamarine sky. There are people there with him, but he can’t see their faces. They put their hands on him, on his arms and legs and belly, and as the pain ripples through him they catch it and draw it out of him. He feels their minds nudging up against his mind, supporting him, buoying him. He feels the baby’s mind, a confused swirl of agitation and fear as it’s home contracts around it, squeezing tighter and tighter. He reaches out for it with his thoughts, feels the others reaching for it too, soothing it as it makes the sudden passage from the warm dark of his body into the cold, bright air. The children of Antar never cry when they’re born, because they know that they are loved, that they are safe.

That’s where his mother gave birth to him, in a quiet, sunny room with people who loved her all around. Not like the place she died.

***

_Antar_. He wakes up with the word echoing in his mind, fading with the image of an aquamarine sky. For a moment, he feels like he has hold of the edge of something important.

Then he has to roll over and throw up in the basin sitting next to him on the pillow.

“Oh, hey.” Alex is there immediately, giving him a glass of water to rinse his mouth, then taking the basin away to clean it. He comes back with a warm, damp washcloth for Michael to wipe his face with.

Michael rasps out, “Where’s Kyle?”

“He got paged to the hospital. He’ll be back later this afternoon to look in on you. And Liz is coming over this evening to take more blood samples and update us on her research. So I’m going to hang out here with you today.”

Alex is acting all weird and breezy, like this situation is normal and not excruciatingly awkward.

And on the subject of awkward. Michael clears his throat. “I, um, need to use the bathroom.”

Alex’s eyes widen. “Okay. Um. Do you think you can stand up if you lean on me and take it real slow?”

It turns out Michael can, which is great news, because Kyle has threatened to hook him up to a catheter if he loses any more mobility, and he really doesn’t need to add that to his growing list of humiliations. He manages to hobble to the bathroom leaning on Alex’s shoulder, and tries not to think about how good Alex smells. Once he’s there, _thank God_, Alex goes away and lets him take care of his business. Afterwards, he manages to at least partially brush his teeth with the spare toothbrush Kyle left for him, although sticking it far enough into his mouth to reach his molars makes him dry heave.

When he’s curled up back in bed he pulls out his phone, planning to just ignore Alex for as long as possible until he takes the hint and realizes Michael doesn’t want to talk to him.

Alex does not take the hint. Instead he hovers awkwardly by Michael’s bed for a while, then drags one of the kitchen chairs over and sits down on it. “So, um, we should probably talk,” he says. “About the baby.”

Michael looks up. This is the first time Alex has acknowledged that there _is _a baby. He’d been starting to wonder if maybe Liz hadn’t spilled that detail of his personal life along with everything else, but no such luck. “What about it?”

Alex’s voice is carefully neutral. “Kyle says you want to keep it.”

Michael glares. Fucking Kyle. “Why are you talking to Kyle about this?”

Irritation flashes over Alex’s face. “I’m talking to you about it right now.”

“Do you have a problem with me keeping the baby? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“No! Did you hear me say that?”

“Because I didn’t ask for your help. I’m not expecting anything from you. If you can’t handle this, just fuck off, okay? I’m not changing my mind.” 

“Oh my God!” Alex runs his hands through his hair, making half of it stand up. “I’m not trying to get you to change your mind! I _want _to help! I just didn’t think I’d ever be in this situation, for obvious reasons, and it’s a lot to adjust to!”

“Yeah, no shit! How do you think I feel?”

Alex’s face softens. He says quietly, “I think you’re really freaked out. And scared.”

That stops Michael in his tracks for a second, because yeah. He definitely is. But he doesn’t want to talk about that right now, so he changes tactics and sneers, “So is Kyle your best friend now? Do you talk about boys with him?”

“Why do you have to be such a dick to Kyle? He’s bending over backwards trying to help you, and you’re just being an asshole.”

“_I’m _the asshole? Have you forgotten what he did to you in high school?”

Alex rolls his eyes. “We’re not in high school anymore. We all have way bigger problems now than Kyle calling me a faggot and throwing my textbooks out the window.”

“So he just gets a free pass, then? He gets to do all that shit and now you pretend like it didn’t happen, because what? He feels bad about it? That’s not right!”

“I’m not pretending it didn’t happen. I’m the one it happened to, remember? But a lot of other stuff has happened to me since then. Kyle is not something I need to waste time being upset about.”

“Yeah, you have more important things to be upset about now. Like me selling copper wire from the junkyard, which is apparently way more unforgiveable than anything Kyle did.” 

Alex makes a frustrated sound. “Guerin, that wasn’t really about the copper wire, and you know it.”

Michael wants to scream, “_Then what the fuck _was_ it about_?” but he doesn’t think he actually wants to hear the answer. Instead he says, “I just don’t think you should let him off the hook so easy.”

Alex sighs. “Look. He was a kid, and he was scared. He saw what my dad did to me for being gay, and so he started trying to prove to everyone that he _wasn’t _gay, so that no one would ever treat _him _like that. Sure, it was shitty of him, but I’m not going to hold it against him for the rest of his life.”

Michael says stubbornly, “Being scared isn’t an excuse to hurt someone. He should have stood up for you.”

Alex’s eyes are sad. “Not everyone’s as brave as you, Guerin. I wasn’t, at that age.”

Michael doesn’t know what to say to that.

After a moment Alex says, “The truth is,_ I_ needed to forgive Kyle. Because I need to just...believe in forgiveness, in general. That a person can do really awful things and...come back from that. Be different. Be better.” He looks up at the ceiling, but his eyes are unfocused, like he’s seeing something else.

Michael has the wild thought that whatever terrible thing Alex thinks he did can’t actually have been that bad, because it’s him. Which is insane, because Alex has done multiple terrible things _to Michael _that he definitely hasn’t forgiven him for. And Alex has like, been to war, so who knows what kind of fucked up stuff he was involved in. Maybe he shot a kid. Michael hopes he didn’t shoot a kid. But he just looks so goddamned_ sad_ right now.

“Hey.” Michael reaches out and puts his hand on Alex’s knee. “I’m sorry, okay? I’ll stop being a jerk to Kyle. Or at least I’ll try. I mean, if he starts talking about Star Wars again, all bets are off.”

Alex blinks at him like he’s surprised, which is insulting. Michael can be a good guy! He has apologized before in his life! Then he realizes Alex is looking at his hand. His formerly broken hand, which is now resting on Alex’s leg. It’s still got a bandage on it from last night, but it’s pretty clear if you look right at it that it’s not the ugly mess it used to be.

“Guerin...” Alex reaches out and takes Michael’s hand, holding it gently in both of his own, like it’s a fragile little baby bird or something. It makes Michael’s stomach go all swoopy. “Last night...I didn’t notice. What happened?”

Michael snatches his hand away and shoves it under the blanket. “Max. Before he died.”

Alex sucks his breath in. “Oh.”

There’s a pause. Then Michael says, “I didn’t want him to. He just...did it. Without asking.” He’s not sure why he’s telling Alex this. 

Alex appears to be struggling with what to say. “I’m so sorry about Max.” He twists his fingers in the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “Liz told me what happened. I should have—I should have said something last night. I know how much he meant to you.”

Michael shrugs. “Yeah, whatever.” _You should have been there_, he thinks. _You shouldn’t have had to find out from Liz_. _You should have known I needed you_. This is unfair, and also crazy, which is why he doesn’t say it out loud. But it’s how he feels.

Another pause.

Abruptly, Alex says, “If someone told me they could heal me, like just grow back the part of my leg that was amputated, I’m not sure I’d say yes.”

Michael looks up at him. He’s never heard Alex talk about his leg.

Alex’s face is unsure, tentative. “I mean, it would be great if it didn’t hurt anymore. It aches like a bitch if I stand on it too long, and I’m really tired of waking up with phantom pains every other night. But to just suddenly have it back again, like it never happened...feels wrong.”

He’s rubbing his knee, staring at things that aren’t there again. 

Michael wants to ask him what did happen when he lost his leg. Was it an I.E.D.? A suicide bomber? How close did he come to dying, to Michael never seeing him again? But he shies away from it, partly because he’s afraid that in this weird mood, Alex might actually tell him. Instead, he goes for flippant. “Max would probably say some shit about how you’re holding onto trauma and you need to let it go.”

Alex raises his eyebrows. “Is that what he said to you?”

“Yeah, basically.”

Alex sighs.

Michael frowns. “What?”

“It’s nothing.”

“No really, what?”

Alex shakes his head. “Look, I don’t want to say this, because he’s dead, but that was a really messed up thing for him to do.”

Michael laughs hollowly. “Yeah, that’s the thing. He’s dead, so I can’t even be pissed at him for it. But the guy had a goddamn savior complex. He always did, I guess, but it got worse the more fucked up shit happened to us. He was always trying to fix what was wrong, and he never could. It drove him crazy. It drove _me _crazy.”

“He wanted to fix you.”

Michael blows out his breath, tears inexplicably pricking at his eyes. “Yeah.” He hadn’t realized until now how much he’d needed someone to understand.

Alex understands. Alex is looking at him with so much empathy, so much fucking tenderness right now.

Michael turns away, rolling onto his side and pulling the blankets up over himself, like he’s cold. “I’m tired. I’m going to go back to sleep.”

***

He can’t sleep. He’s sweaty and nauseous, and he can’t stop listening to the little sounds of Alex moving around the apartment.

The emotional whiplash of their morning conversation has left him feeling unsettled and vaguely guilty. Every time he yells at Alex or shuts him down, he has to watch that little hurt wrinkle appear in Alex’s forehead when he frowns, all sad and confused about why Michael is being mean to him. There’s only so much of that Michael’s going to be able to take. But if he stops doing those things, if he lets Alex in...

Michael’s not actually sure what would happen. But he _is_ sure he can’t handle another round of him baring his soul only for Alex to stomp on his heart like it’s a cockroach.

_Seen it before, hate how it ends_.

Alex is doing something on his laptop at the kitchen table. Michael can hear the keys clicking. After a while, Alex goes to the counter and turns on the electric kettle. He opens the cabinet and takes something down. Probably tea. Alex apparently drinks a lot of tea, which is weird. Michael wants to ask him when he started doing that, but then he’d have to admit he’s not really sleeping.

Being trapped in this apartment with Alex is literal torture.

He’s hyper-aware of everything Alex is doing, and his brain keeps supplying images to go with the sounds he hears. Alex’s hand on the handle of the mug, Alex’s lips on the rim as he sips his tea. Alex sighing and stretching, his spine popping quietly as his back arches, his sleeves falling down over his wrists as he raises his arms over his head.

Michael is losing his fucking mind. He wants Alex to come over here and touch his hair the way Maria did when he was lying on her bathroom floor. He wants Alex to leave and never come back.

Eventually he has to puke again, and it’s pointless to continue faking sleep. He watches as Alex washes out his vomit bowl and changes his I.V. bag. He wonders how long Alex is going to put up with taking care of his disgusting, moody ass before he gets sick of him and leaves. Again.

“Where did you go?” he says abruptly.

Alex turns and looks at him, confused. “What?”

Michael coughs and clears his throat. “When you left. Where did you go? Didn’t the Air Force care that you took off like that? I thought they had rules about that kind of thing.”

“Oh, that.” Alex dries his hands and stands leaning against the kitchen counter. “I only had three weeks left before my enlistment period was up. And then I got this call that my dad was in a coma, so I requested leave to deal with a family emergency.”

“You were with your _dad_?” says Michael, incredulous.

Alex snorts. “Fuck no. I went to California.”

Despite himself, Michael laughs. God, he loves how bitchy Alex can be.

“Yeah, I have no idea what’s going on with Master Sargent Manes.” Alex’s enunciation of his father’s name is poisonously sarcastic. “I assume if he died someone would call me. And he hasn’t come and tried to murder Kyle yet, so he’s probably still unconscious.”

“So it really was Kyle who put him in the coma?” asks Michael. He’s having a hard time believing that someone who’s such a douchebag could do something so awesome.

The corner of Alex’s mouth quirks up. “Yep. He stabbed him with a syringe full of barbiturates. Kyle is surprisingly badass.”

“Well, damn.” Michael shakes his head. “I guess I really will have to start being nicer to him.”

Alex laughs softly. “Don’t strain yourself.” He turns back to the sink and starts doing the dishes again.

Michael doesn’t want the conversation to be over. “What did you do in California?”

A lock of Alex’s hair falls down over his forehead, and he reaches up to brush it away with the back of his wrist. It’s longer than it was when he left. “At first I just drove until I hit the ocean. I ended up on this beach in Santa Monica with hundreds of tourists and screaming kids. Then I tried to drive up the coast and immediately got stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way to Santa Barbara. It turns out a lot of southern California is actually terrible.”

Michael wouldn’t know. The furthest from Roswell he’s ever been is Texas. 

“I saw all the tourist stuff. The redwoods. The golden gate bridge. Yosemite. I eventually ended up in this organic farming commune near Monterey.”

“A commune? Like with hippies? _You_?”

Alex smiles, wry and a little self-conscious. “Yeah, I know, right? I went there in the first place because a guy from my old unit was living there. They take in a lot of strays. You can pitch a tent on their land and eat their food if you just do some like, weeding and sweeping for them. And...I don’t know. I just...stayed.”

“I’m having a really hard time picturing this. What did you do when you weren’t weeding and sweeping?”

Alex looks embarrassed. “I...um...mostly smoked weed and played the guitar.”

What the _fuck_? This is blowing Michael’s mind. “Wow, I don’t know, Alex. That sounds like conduct unbecoming of an airman.” He means it to be biting, but it comes out softer than he intends, more teasing.

Alex laughs. “Hey, it’s legal in California.”

Michael sighs and flops back on his pillow. “God, I would kill for a joint.”

Alex looks thoughtful. “I wonder if it would actually help with the nausea? Although...I guess you can’t really smoke right now because of the baby.”

A weird little thrill goes through Michael when Alex says “baby.” “Yeah, I’m pretty sure if I called Kyle and asked him if I could smoke weed while pregnant with an alien baby, he’d say no.”

Alex pauses for a moment, like he’s thinking about what to say next. “Hey, this might sound weird, but you know how they say babies can hear stuff before they’re born?”

Michael has never heard this, but he says, “Sure.”

Alex says, shy and halting, “I was wondering...I don’t know, maybe this is incredibly lame, but what if I played something for the baby? Like, on the guitar?”

That’s the corniest thing Michael has ever heard, but it makes him feel gooey and warm inside. Must be the fucking pregnancy hormones.

“Okay,” he says, a little breathlessly. 

Alex gets his guitar and settles himself in the chair next to the bed. Michael watches as his left hand curls around the neck and his right arm drapes over the rosewood body, easy and familiar. A little stab of jealousy goes through him, and the fucked up thing is he’s not sure if he’s jealous of Alex or the guitar.

Alex must see something in his face, because he says, “Have you been playing at all, since Max healed your hand?”

Michael shrugs. “Not really.” He’d played that one time in the Wild Pony with Maria, when he’d been desperately trying to convince himself he could be happy and normal. Then Max had died, and doing it again felt too much like tempting fate.

“Do you want to?”

He wants to. He wants to a lot. But he shakes his head.

“Okay.” Alex is looking at him with a little furrow between his brows, but he doesn’t say anything about it. “What should I play?”

“Anything that’s not My Chemical Romance.”

Alex laughs. “Hey, fuck you! Gerard Way is a genius, okay?” He strums the guitar and starts singing, “_When I was...a young boy...my father...took me into the city..._”

“Oh my God, stop!” Michael hits him with his pillow. “If you sing that for the baby, it’ll be born with eyeliner and a pill addiction!”

“Okay, okay fine!” Alex thinks for a minute and starts playing something else that Michael doesn’t recognize. It’s slow and sweet with a gentle chord progression. When he starts singing, his voice is rough and soft, like calloused hands stroking over Michael’s skin. It makes something deep inside of him shiver.

_Just before our love got lost you said_

_I am as constant as the northern star _

_And I said,_

_Constantly in the darkness_

_Where’s that at?_

_If you want me I’ll be in the bar_

“What is this?” asks Michael in a strangled voice.

Alex cocks an eyebrow at him. “It’s Joni Mitchell. You’ve never heard this song before?”

“No. Uh...it doesn’t really seem like your style.”

Alex smiles a little, his fingers still teasing gently at the strings. “My mom used to play this album a lot when I was a kid. She was really into like, old white people hippie music, for some reason. It reminds me of, I don’t know...being taken care of, I guess. Do you want me to play something else?”

“Um...no,” says Michael, because _yes, please stop, the way you’re singing is making me feel things_, is not something he wants to say out loud. “This is fine.”

The little smirk tucked into the corner of Alex’s mouth suggests that Michael isn’t fooling him, but he continues without comment. Michael lies there and lets the music lap at him like warm water, soothing and intimate.

Alex really does have a beautiful voice, he thinks. This is what he should have done with his life, instead of joining the fucking Air Force. 

_Oh you are in my blood like holy wine_  
_You taste so bitter_  
_ And so sweet oh_  
_ I could drink a case of you darling and I would_  
_ Still be on my feet_  
_ Oh I would still be on my feet_

Michael thinks a little grumpily that whatever this album is, it presumably had other songs on it that weren’t blatant expressions of unrequited romantic longing for an ex-boyfriend addressed in the second person. Alex probably thinks he’s being subtle.

The problem is that whatever Alex thinks he’s doing, it’s definitely working. As he watches Alex curl around the guitar, hands moving, hair falling into his eyes, Michael feels like he’s melting.

_I remember that time that you told me, you said__  
__"Love is touching souls"_  
_Surely you touched mine 'cause_  
_ Part of you pours out of me_  
_ In these lines from time to time_

God, he loves this man. He loves his eyebrows, his wrists, the soft shell of his ear. Ever since that night in Jesse Manes’ toolshed, he’s felt like Alex left a part of himself inside him, like a splinter, that stabs him every so often when he isn’t expecting it.

Sometimes he wonders if there’s something wrong with him, if this is some fucked up part of his alien biology that made him fixate on the first person he ever loved, even though anyone sane would have moved on by now. Like Max’s uncomfortable obsession with Liz. (Or maybe, he thinks with a chill, like Noah’s obsession with Rosa.)

But at this point it doesn’t even matter anymore, because it’s clear that the way he feels isn’t going away. He’s going to love Alex forever, no matter how much it hurts.

_I met a woman_  
_She had a mouth like yours, she knew your life_  
_ She knew your devils and your deeds and she said_  
_ "Go to him_  
_ stay with him if you can_  
_ But be prepared to bleed"_

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Michael’s been bleeding for Alex for so long, and he just can’t do it anymore. Love isn’t supposed to feel like this, like he’s dying all the time. Like he’s walking around with his chest cut open and his heart ripped out. And _fuck_, now he’s about to start crying.

The song ends. 

Alex stills the strings with his hand and looks at Michael quizzically, like he hasn’t just turned him inside out and left him like that. “What did you think?”

Michael takes a shaky breath. “Yeah, that was fine. But you know, if you’re going to play that hippie shit for the baby, we’d better balance it out by playing some like, Led Zeppelin or something.”

They spend the rest of the afternoon playing songs for the baby on youtube.

Michael discovers to his horror that Alex apparently hates Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd, and in fact all classic rock except the Beatles, who Alex insists don’t actually count as classic rock.

“You can’t hate Led Zeppelin! Jimmy Page is one of the greatest guitar players of all time!”

Alex shrugs. “I just don’t like their music.”

If Michael had known this about Alex ten years ago, he doesn’t think he would’ve been able to have sex with him. (That’s a lie. He would definitely still have had sex with him.)

Alex also claims to hate country music, although he admits to listening to the Dixie Chicks a lot in 2006 to piss off his dad.

Michael, who lived on a ranch for ten years, is not going to stand for that. “Come on! Even ‘Jolene’? Everyone likes ‘Jolene!’” When they play it in the Wild Pony, everyone goes nuts, even uptight preps like Isobel.

Alex says, “I think Dolly Parton is gay for Jolene in that song.”

Michael is not going to argue with that.

Alex, it turns out, has (mostly) moved on from his high school emo phase and is now into some really weird shit like Norwegian death metal and “post-rock,” whatever that is.

“What the fuck is this?” demands Michael, as Alex makes him listen to a recording of some guy’s magnetic tapes of ambient sounds from the 80s being played over and over while they slowly disintegrate. It’s set to footage of the twin towers burning down on 9/11. “This is not even music, Alex!”

“It’s art, Guerin! This album has a 10/10 on Pitchfork!”

“This track is an hour long! Jesus, turn it off!”

Alex laughs. “Okay, okay.” He thinks for a minute, then types something into the search bar.

Michael goes quiet as he hears the ethereal piano and percussion flowing out of the computer speakers.

_The Atlantic was born today, and I'll tell you how_ _  
The clouds above opened up and let it out_

Suddenly, the past rises up and wraps around him, and it’s May of 2008 on a bench outside the music room, with Alex slipping one of his earbuds into Michael’s ear and saying low and confident, “Here, I think you’ll like this.”

For the next month, Michael had listened to that album on repeat, lying in the bed of his truck with Max’s old ipod, thinking about Alex.

_I need you so much closer_

_I need you so much closer_

He remembers intensely what it was like to fall in love with Alex. The way his heart tried to pound its way out of his chest every time they made eye contact in the hallway. Watching him laugh with Maria and Liz at lunchtime, while Michael sat with Max and Isobel and wondered what would happen if he went over there and tried to talk to him. Staring at the back of his head in class and thinking about what it would be like if he kissed that soft skin under Alex’s ear, right where his hair curled just a little. Wondering what it meant that he was thinking about kissing a boy’s ear.

God, he should have kissed Alex sooner. They could have had more time, instead of just that one day. One day and ten years.

_I need you so much closer_

_I need you so much closer_

“Are you okay?” asks Alex tentatively. “You look...weird. I just thought this was a song I knew we both liked.”

Michael has no idea what his face is doing right now.

_So come on, come on_

_Come on, come on_

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he says, his voice hoarse. “You’re right. I do like this song.”

His gaze is locked with Alex’s, and his heart is pounding like he’s seventeen again. The moment stretches out between them like a chasm that Michael’s about to jump into. He’s really close to doing something stupid.

Then someone starts banging on the door and yelling, “Hello?”

Michael panics and slams Alex’s laptop closed like they’ve been caught watching porn. Alex gives him a weird look as he gets up to answer the door.

It’s Liz and Rosa with a bunch of take-out bags from the Chinese place across the street.

“Hey!” says Liz. “We came to give you an update on our research. And to feed Alex. Kyle said he had barely any food in his fridge and we didn’t want him to starve. Hi Alex.”

Alex crosses the room and hugs her tight, bags and all. “Hey Liz. Thanks for calling me.”

Liz hugs him back, squeezing him hard for a second, then pulls away and puts her bags down on the table. “Yeah. Any time.” She reaches out and takes his hand. “Are you okay?”

Alex’s eyes flick over to Michael for a second, then back to Liz. “Yeah, I’m okay. Mostly. I’ll tell you about it later.”

She nods. “Okay.”

Well fuck, thinks Michael. That was definitely code for, _I want to talk about Guerin, but I can’t do it right now because he’s here_. Michael wishes he had someone to talk to about Alex.

Alex turns to Rosa. She’s hanging back uncertainly, like she’s not sure if she’s supposed to hug him like they’re friends or shake his hand like they’re strangers. “Hey, Rosa,” he says. “I missed you.”

“Hey,” she says, with a little catch in her voice, and hugs him, burying her face in his shoulder. He wraps his arms around her and holds her, pressing his cheek against the top of her head. After a minute she pulls back and looks up at him. “You look so different!”

Something flickers in Alex’s face, a little flash of hurt, but it’s gone as soon as it comes. “Well, ten years will do that,” he says. He lets her go and walks over to the table. “Is Kyle coming?” He opens one of the cartons of fried rice and shovels some of it into his mouth with his fingers. “_God_, that’s good.”

Michael feels guilty. All Alex has had to eat today are the nasty protein bars he found in one of Kyle’s cupboards.

“Alex! Don’t be gross!” Liz shoves a plastic fork into Alex’s hand. “Yeah, he said he was coming over after his shift ends, which is in like half an hour, I think. We should probably wait for him before we talk business.”

They all settle down to eat while Michael lies there and tries to ignore the way the smell of hot oil and garlic is making his stomach churn.

Liz and Rosa tell Alex about San Diego, which is apparently where they’ve been this whole time.

Alex tells them about his road trip adventures, including a truly insane story about a hitchhiker he picked up who claimed to be the reincarnation of Oscar Wilde’s boyfriend and tried to steal his guitar.

Kyle arrives as they’re finishing up. He falls into one of the kitchen chairs with a groan and kicks off his shoes. “Hey guys. Is that lo mein? Is there more of it? I’m starving. I didn’t have time to eat lunch today.” He takes the half-full container out of Alex’s hands.

Michael rolls his eyes, but no one notices. 

“Okay,” says Liz. “Since everyone’s here, I’ll tell you what I’ve found. Or not found. Whatever. Michael, you are definitely not having an immune reaction to the baby’s human DNA. There’s no sign of an immune response in either you or the baby, as far as I can tell. Which is good news, but also super weird. I don’t understand how your body is being so accommodating to a fetus that’s partially a whole different species. But it is, I guess? So we don’t have to worry about that.”

“Um...great,” says Michael. He has the incredibly dumb thought that his body isn’t attacking the baby’s DNA because it’s Alex’s, and it _knows_ Alex. But that’s, like, not how science works.

“Have you made any progress on what _is_ actually wrong with him?” asks Kyle through a mouthful of orange chicken.

Liz wrinkles her nose and passes him a napkin. “Not really, other than eliminating a few basic things. He doesn’t seem to have a bacterial infection, or anything viral. I wish I had more healthy samples for a baseline. I’ve been calling Isobel all day, but she’s not answering. I even went to her house, and she’s not there. It looks like no one’s been there for months, actually. Are you sure she’s okay, Michael?”

“I would know if something had happened to her,” says Michael, but suddenly he’s not sure. He should have tried harder. He should know where his own sister is.

He’s just starting to panic when Kyle says, “She’s around. I saw her at Target last week.”

“Okay, so she’s probably not dead,” says Liz. “Where do you think she went, Michael?”

“I don’t know. Maybe her mom’s. Or Max’s.”

Liz sighs. “Yikes. I hope she’s not at Max’s. I really don’t want to go over there.” 

“I can go,” says Alex. “Now, if you want. If one of you stays here with Michael.”

“Don’t go yet,” says Kyle, swallowing and setting down his empty Chinese food carton. “There’s some stuff I need to tell you all. And...um...it’s not good news.”

Something in his tone warns Michael to brace himself.

Alex must notice him tense up, because he reaches out and squeezes Michael’s shoulder. Michael startles and turns to look at him, and Alex pulls back, self-conscious. He says, “What’s going on Kyle?”

Kyle leans back in his chair and sighs. “It’s pretty bad. I looked through the files we stole from Caulfield, to see if they said anything about this kind of thing happening before. Turns out...they do.”

“What do you mean?” asks Alex.

Kyle’s face is grim. “This isn’t the first time there’s been an alien-human hybrid fetus. At least ten of the alien prisoners in Caulfield became pregnant between 1947 and 1971.”

“The prisoners?” says Liz. “But that means that the human parents must have been—oh. Oh my God.” She looks sick.

Alex lets out an agonized breath. “The guards were sexually abusing them. Fuck. Oh, _fuck_.”

Kyle rubs his face. “Yeah. Our families. Our goddamn _grandfathers_, Alex.”

Michael is hot all over and he can’t breathe. He grabs for the basin and retches violently over and over, until his nose is running and tears are streaming down his face.

“Guerin! Are you okay?”

Alex reaches for him, but Michael knocks his hand away. He snarls in a horrible, clotted voice, “Don’t touch me!”

Alex jerks back, stricken.

Michael presses his hands over his face to shut out the room full of humans staring at him. He should have expected this. He knew what the men who ran Project Shepherd were like. But it was one thing to know that his family—his _mother_—had been tortured for seventy years, and another to hear the fucking _details_.

“Michael?” says Liz uncertainly.

He says, voice muffled, “Don’t talk to me right now.”

“Okay.”

There’s a pause. Michael tries to gather himself. “What happened to them? The pregnant prisoners at Caulfield?”

Kyle answers, “They all died.”

The words fall into the silence like rocks dropped into a lake.

Liz’s voice is shocked. “_All _of them?”

“None of them made it to five months. The fetuses were all non-viable.”

_Non-viable_. Michael bites down on the inside of his cheek and tastes blood in his mouth. “Let me see the files.”

Kyle says, “Michael, I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Michael snarls, “I’m not a fucking child, Kyle! It’s not your job to protect me! Give me the goddamn files!”

Kyle opens his mouth to say something—and Michael is _real _close to throwing him out the window if it turns out to be more patronizing bullshit—but before he can, there’s a knock on the door.

It’s a sharp, impatient knock that makes Michael sit up straight, extra-sensory awareness tingling down his spine.

Alex is suddenly alert. “Are we expecting anyone else?” he asks softly.

Kyle and Liz shake their heads.

Alex stands up and moves towards the door. “Kyle, get your gun,” he whispers. “Liz and Rosa, get Michael into the bedroom.”

Michael says, “Wait. It’s Isobel.”

“How do you know?” asks Liz, who is wavering between him and Rosa like she’s not sure which one of them she wants to jump on and act as a human shield for.

“I just know!” says Michael. He can feel her on the other side of the door, radiating intense emotions in all directions. “Kyle, put your damn gun away, it’s fine.”

Kyle looks at Alex for confirmation, which is extremely fucking annoying.

“Michael!” yells Isobel from the hallway. “Is that you? Are you okay?”

Alex opens the door.

Isobel sees him and her eyes widen. “Oh my God, _you’re _here? What happened to him? Is he dying? I would know if he was dying! Michael?”

She pushes past Alex, knocking him into the wall with her elbow, and sees Michael lying in a heap of rumpled blankets on the sofa bed. “Michael. Oh. _Oh._” Her face crumples, and she rushes over to him, hugging him to her chest and curling over him like she’s trying to protect him. Her emotions flood into him in a tumble of rage and grief and regret—rage _on his behalf_, grief _for him_, regret that she hurt _him_. She says without speaking, _I love you, I missed you, I’m so sorry_. _I’m here now_. _I’m here_. 

Michael trembles under the onslaught and presses his face against her shoulder. “Hey, Iz,” he whispers shakily.

She cradles his head against her, burying her face in his hair. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers over and over. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Everyone else in the room just stares at them.

After a moment, Liz says, “Um...hi, Isobel. What are you doing here?”

“I’m here because of your like fifty texts and messages!” snaps Isobel. “You said you needed my alien blood samples for Michael, so here I am! What you _didn’t _tell me, was where Michael _was_, or _why _he needed them, or _anything_ about what’s going on! I had to call the junkyard, and then the hospital, and then _bribe _a nurse to get Kyle’s address!”

“Wait—which nurse?” says Kyle, looking alarmed.

Liz frowns. “Why didn’t you just call me back?”

“I _did _call you back! Like a million times! It went straight to voicemail!”

“Oh _shit_,” mutters Liz, wincing. She looks at Isobel. “I guess...I forgot to unblock your number?” 

“You _blocked my number_?”

“Isobel,” says Kyle, trying to get her attention, “which nurse gave you my address? They really shouldn’t do that. I’m going to have to report them. Like, that’s just unsafe.”

“Yes, I blocked your number! Because you were acting like a freaking crazy person!” says Liz, her usual composure unravelling.

“Well, if you hadn’t been too _stupid _to unblock it,” hisses Isobel, “I could have been here yesterday!”

“And if you hadn’t abandoned Michael three months ago, you wouldn’t have needed me to call you! You would have known he was sick!” Liz yells.

“_Fuck you_!” screams Isobel, and the light fixture in Kyle’s living room explodes.

There’s a stunned silence.

Isobel takes a deep breath and rubs her hand over her forehead. “Sorry, Kyle. That’s started happening when I get emotional. Which is...a lot, lately. I’ll pay you for the damage.”

Michael rubs her back, radiating confusion. _What????_ _How????_

All he gets from her is a jumble of images, Noah sneering at her, a picture frame breaking, a glowing hand on someone’s skin.

_What the fuck? _

“Liz,” says Rosa quietly, “you need to apologize. That was way out of line.” 

Isobel looks up and seems to see Rosa for the first time. Michael feels a wave of panic surge through her as the blood drains from her face. Instinctively, he wraps his arm around her.

“I’m sorry, Isobel,” says Liz, sounding genuinely contrite. “I shouldn’t have said that. This has just been a really stressful few days. Or...months, really. For all of us.”

“Yeah,” says Isobel faintly. “Yeah, it has.” She’s still looking at Rosa.

Rosa sighs. “Okay, let’s get this out of the way. Some asshole murdered me while possessing your body, it wasn’t your fault, I’m not mad at you, and I don’t want to talk about it. Can we please move on?” 

Michael feels Isobel tremble a little against him. “I’m just...so sorry,” she says. “For everything that happened to you.”

Rosa’s face in unreadable. “Thanks. But like I said, I’d really rather just move on.”

Isobel doesn’t seem to know what to say to this.

Kyle clears his throat. “Um...don’t worry about the light. I’ll just call maintenance and tell them the wiring shorted out or something.” He pauses. “I guess I should probably clean the broken glass out of the carpet.”


	3. Chapter 3

Isobel is oddly blasé about the whole “Michael is pregnant” thing. She just gives Alex the side-eye and says, “Well, I guess that explains what _you’re _doing here.” 

“You aren’t weirded out by this?” asks Michael. He’s lying slumped against Isobel’s shoulder, so fucking glad to have her back that he doesn’t even care that her bony elbow is digging into his side.

Isobel snorts. “Michael, if I’ve learned anything in the past few months, it’s that we’re missing a lot of information about ourselves. This particular revelation is way less upsetting than finding out my husband is a serial killer. Also, babies are adorable and I’m going to be an awesome aunt.”

Michael looks up at her. “Yeah?”

She nudges him. “Of _course_. This kid’s going to need a positive role model who can teach it about fashion and table manners and the importance of living in an actual house. I’ll take them ice-skating and buy them candy and make-up. They’re going to _love _me.”

Michael laughs. “What if it’s a boy?”

“Boys can wear make-up,” says Isobel.

Liz says carefully, “We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves here.”

Isobel frowns. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” says Liz, “that the baby is making Michael _extremely sick_ and we don’t know why. We’re not even sure he’ll be able to carry the pregnancy to term, at this point.”

A cold thrill runs through Michael. “But you said the baby was fine.”

“It is, or at least we think so,” says Liz. “But _you’re _not. You can’t just not eat for the next six months. And the new information from Caulfield is really troubling.”

“But that was fifty years ago,” Michael argues. “And they didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. You do. Just keep feeding me through the I.V. like you’re doing now, and you’ll figure it out.” 

Kyle clears his throat. “There are a number of reasons why it wouldn’t be a good idea to keep you on I.V.-only nutrition indefinitely. But I think it’s premature for us to start worrying about that. Liz has only been working on the problem for 24 hours.”

“How long does he have?” asks Alex. It’s the first time he’s spoken since Isobel barged in.

“What?” says Kyle.

“How long does Michael have, if Liz can’t figure it out? That’s what you’re implying, right? That this could kill him, like the patients at Caulfield?”

Kyle and Liz exchange glances.

“It’s...hard to say,” says Kyle. “If we can’t get him eating some kind of real food again, both he and the baby are going to be severely malnourished. And if the baby isn’t getting enough nutrients, it’s going to strip Michael’s body for them, which is just going to make him sicker. He’s going to be at risk for serious complications, like blood clots, brain swelling, organ failure...it could get really bad.”

“_Organ failure_?” says Isobel. “He could get _organ failure_?”

Alex says, “But if you end the pregnancy, he’ll get better?”

Michael feels the words like a blow to the face, like Jesse Manes’ hammer coming down on his hand. _End the pregnancy_. A few hours ago, Alex was talking about the baby like it was something he was going to be part of. Like he was planning on—shockingly—sticking around for it. And now he’s just talking about getting rid of it, like it’s nothing.

“Probably?” says Kyle, shooting another glance at Liz. “Provided that he doesn’t suffer any irreversible organ damage first?”

Rage twists white-hot inside Michael. He looks right at Alex and says, “No. That’s not an option. I’m not killing this baby.”

Alex flinches.

Michael shouldn’t be surprised, he tells himself. He shouldn’t be _disappointed_. He _knows _Alex always tries to run.

“Michael,” says Liz helplessly, “I get that this is a really terrible situation, but you might not have a choice. If you die, the baby’s going to die anyway.”

“Put me in the pod,” says Michael immediately. “That’ll stop whatever’s happening to me, and it’ll give Liz more time.”

There’s a shocked silence.

Liz says, “We only did that to Isobel because we didn’t have any other choice.”

“We don’t know how long we’d have to keep you in there,” says Kyle. “Would you really want to do that? Go into the pod indefinitely, when you had another option?”

Michael doesn’t really understand why they’re upset. Going into the pod sounds nice, actually. He could just go to sleep, and when he woke up, maybe things wouldn’t hurt so much anymore.

Alex says, “What if it makes you forget?” The expression on his face is horrible, like Michael has just threatened to kill himself or something.

Michael says, “What do you mean, forget?”

“You don’t remember anything from before you went into the pod when you were kids. You have to admit, that’s _weird_. You were seven—you’d think you’d remember _something_. What if the pod erased your memories somehow? What if it does it again?”

“Isobel’s memories were fine,” argues Michael.

“Yeah, but she was only in the pod for six weeks the second time,” says Liz slowly.

“Rosa didn’t lose her memories. Hell, _Noah _didn’t, and he was in the pod as long as we were.”

“But that pod was malfunctioning,” says Kyle. “I think Alex has a point. We don’t know what kind of side effects an extended stay in a pod will have on you. What if it turns you into a serial killer, too?”

“I’m not going to become a serial killer, Kyle!”

Isobel interrupts them, holding up her hands. “I think I might have another option.”

For a moment, the all just stare at her, confused. Then her palms glow red.

Liz recoils. “Oh my God!”

Michael gasps. “Holy fucking _shit_, Iz!”

“Yikes!” says Kyle. “Isn’t that the murder hands thing? Can you put the murder hands away, Isobel?”

Isobel looks at him like he’s an idiot. “They’re not _murder hands_. This is how we _heal_.”

Kyle frowns. “But I thought only Max could do that?”

Isobel lets the light fade. “We can _all _do it. We just didn’t realize.”

“Noah,” says Michael, understanding. “He didn’t have just one ability. He had all of them.”

“Yes.” Isobel’s voice is poisonous. “He was so much more powerful than us. But he wasn’t anything special. He said it himself, he was _nothing_ back where we came from. So I thought he must have learned how to do all of those things. And decided if he could, so could I.”

“And you can?” asks Liz, sounding disturbed.

Isobel smiles, wide and a little predatory. “Yes.”

“Iz, you can’t just go around healing people!” says Michael, horrified. “They’re going to notice!”

Isobel blinks at him innocently. “Not if I erase their memories.”

“Wow,” says Liz. “That’s...um...really unethical.”

Isobel snorts. “Please. It’s not like I’m hurting anyone by getting rid of some drunk tourist’s arthritis.”

“What if you screw up and kill someone?” demands Liz.

Isobel rolls her eyes. “That’s not how it works, Liz.”

“Max,” says Michael suddenly. “You wanted to learn how to heal because you think you can bring back Max. Oh, Iz, _no._”

Isobel tosses her hair. “Who said anything about Max?” Like she’s fooling anyone.

Michael struggles to sit up, fighting a new wave of dizziness. “Iz, Max _died _to bring Rosa back. You _can’t_.”

“Max didn’t know what he was _doing_. I do. Or I will.”

“Iz—”

“Michael.” She takes his face in her hands. “Let me show you, okay? Let me help you.”

He meets her gaze, wavering. He shouldn’t encourage this. It’s dangerous and she could get hurt. He can’t lose her _and _Max. But her certainty is burning into him and she’s the only person who seems to think he isn’t crazy for wanting this.

“Okay,” he says.

“Michael, I don’t know if this is a good idea—” Liz begins, but stops when Rosa puts her hand on her arm and shakes her head.

Isobel looks at Rosa, surprised, but Rosa’s gaze flicks away, avoiding eye contact.

Isobel frowns, then shakes herself and tells Michael to lie back on the bed. She puts one hand on his head and the other on his stomach. As her palms begin to glow, he feels her awareness sink into him, spreading out through his body in shining tendrils of light. It’s different than when Max healed him. That had _hurt_, a grinding pain as Max’s energy ripped through him and forcibly rearranged his bones. Isobel is gentler, less invasive. He doesn’t know if this is because she’s a different person or because she’s just had more practice than Max.

“How many times have you done this?” he asks, squirming a little as the sensation of pins and needles washes over his skin.

When Isobel answers, her voice is distant and distracted. “A few...dozen times. Shut up and stop moving.”

She furrows her brow and Michael feels the energy swirling through his abdomen tighten and focus. Suddenly, Isobel gasps and laughs. “Wow. There she is.”

Michael’s breath catches. “She?”

“It’s a girl. She’s so _small_. She’s not...awake yet. She can’t feel me, but I can feel her.” 

A little girl. _His _little girl. The thought fills Michael with a kind of desperate protectiveness. “Is she okay?”

Isobel pauses, her face searching. “She’s...sort of. She’s all right for _now_. But there’s something she needs that she’s not getting. She’s trying to take it from you, but it’s not enough.”

“Something she needs?” asks Liz. “What is it?”

Isobel frowns. “It’s…like a substance? She needs it to grow. Michael needs it too—a little of it, at least, to stay healthy—but the baby’s sucking it all out of him. That’s why he’s sick.”

“Is it like a vitamin?” says Liz. “Or an amino acid? What is it?” She’s apparently forgotten her misgivings about alien healing powers in the face of this new source of information.

Isobel huffs in frustration. “_I_ don’t know. I guess like a vitamin? What’s the difference between a vitamin and a mineral? I have no idea what an amino acid is.”

Liz is visibly trying not to roll her eyes. “A vitamin is an organic compound that can be broken down. Minerals are inorganic and hold their chemical structure. Amino acids are organic molecules that—”

“Yeah, that’s not helpful. Shut up and let me concentrate.” Isobel closes her eyes and shoves more energy down her arm into Michael. “I think...whatever this is, it stays the same. It doesn’t turn into something else. So I guess it’s the second thing you said. A mineral.”

“Can you tell us its name?” asks Kyle.

Isobel opens her eyes and glares at him. “No, I can’t tell you its name. It’s not _labeled_.”

Liz sighs. “Okay, well, that’s better than nothing. It gives me a direction to go in, anyway.”

“Excuse _you_,” says Isobel. “I’ve just given you way more to work with than you had before. You could say thank you.”

Michael expects her to pull away now that she’s finished, but she stays crouched over him with her hands on his skin.

She cocks her head like she’s trying to hear something far away. “There’s something else weird in here.”

“Something weird?” says Michael, alarmed. “_In _me? What the hell does that mean?”

“Is it a tumor?” says Kyle. “Because I don’t think I can handle an alien tumor on top of an alien baby.”

“Jesus, Kyle!” says Michael. “Why do you always think everything is cancer?”

“I’m a surgeon,” says Kyle. “Ninety percent of the time, it _is _cancer.”

“It’s not...a _thing_,” says Isobel, like that explains anything. “It’s not...” She moves both of her hands up to Michael’s head. “It’s _here_.” 

“Oh God,” says Kyle. “Is it a brain tumor?”

“Kyle!”

“It’s not a tumor,” says Isobel. “It’s not physical. It feels...like someone else.”

“Someone _else_? In my _head_?”

“Yes? It’s like someone...left something here. There’s a kind of skin around it that won’t let me through.” Isobel’s eyes narrow in concentration. “Just let me...”

Michael feels an intense pressure behind his eyes, and fragments of images suddenly explode across his vision. He sees an aquamarine sky, a dark-haired girl smiling at him, the streets of a city he’s never visited. The girl takes his hand, bombs fall on the city, turning the sky orange. Children scream, clutching at him as their starship spirals out of control and the ground rushes up at them. Then pain, so much pain, and unbearable grief—

“_Stop_!” he gasps, and shoves Isobel away from him.

“Michael, what?”

“It’s my mother,” he says, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Her memories. I have her memories in my head. And I...I _can’t_.”

“Oh my God. _Michael_.” Isobel puts her hand tentatively on his knee. “Are you sure?”

Michael says haltingly, “I’ve been having these weird dreams about her. I thought they were just dreams. But I...saw things...when you did that just now. She must have...put something in my head, before she died.”

“But that’s good, isn’t it?” says Isobel. “It’s like she’s not completely gone, if she left some of her memories for you. She’s still with you.”

“But I don’t _want it_!” Michael bursts out. “She had a horrible life, and then she died horribly, right in front of me, and it was _my fault_. I don’t want those memories! I don’t want any of it!”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Isobel puts her arms around him, and he hides his face in her shoulder. He’s aware that all the humans are staring at them, and he wishes they would just fucking _go away_.

Isobel must sense what he’s thinking, because she says, “Look, I know this must be really entertaining to watch, but Michael’s tired, so you all need to leave now.”

“Um...” says Kyle. “This is my apartment.”

Isobel sighs, like she thinks it’s in really poor taste for Kyle to insist on staying. “Okay, everyone except Kyle needs to leave.”

“And, uh, Alex is also sleeping here,” says Kyle.

“I can go to my cabin,” says Alex. Then he says hesitantly, “Unless...Guerin? Do you want me stay?”

Michael doesn’t say anything.

Alex sighs. “Okay. I’ll see you guys later. Come on, Liz.”

He picks up his duffel bag and guitar, then pauses with one hand on the door frame, looking back. He says, “It wasn’t your fault, Guerin.”

Then he’s gone.

Michael tries to tell himself that’s what he wanted.

***

He dreams about the dark-haired girl he saw in his mother’s memories.

He meets her at school, when they’re both sixteen. He’s nervous, because he’s here on a scholarship, and all the other students are the children of generals or oligarchs or members of the royal family. When he catches her eye across the old stone courtyard, he expects her to look away, or say something cutting. Instead she smiles.

The first time he kisses her, he knows with dizzy certainty and dread that he will never love anyone else like this again. It’s impossible that she could love him back. He’s no one, and she’s...she’s.... But she does. _Oh_, she does.

And they’re happy. They’re _so _happy. For a while.

He goes to all the state dinners and stands beside her for all the press conferences and puts up with the snide whispers and the tabloids and the disapproving relatives, because it’s _worth _it, to be with _her_.

And when the children are born, first the twins, and then his own baby, he knows he was right not to leave. They need to stay and fight, so the children have a future on a planet that’s their own, so they don’t grow up refugees, wandering out there among the stars.

But then there are bombs falling on the city, and the children are screaming, and the guards are telling them they have to _leave now_, the perimeter has been breached—

***

Michael wakes up and vomits. He hangs over the basin, trembling, trying to forget the image of seven-year-old Isobel and Max and _himself _crying and clinging to him—no, to his _mother—_as the skyline outside the window erupts in flames.

Isobel is having some kind of fight with Kyle and hasn’t noticed he’s awake.

“I’m just saying,” she says, “You should have something in your kitchen other than protein bars and beer. What are your guests supposed to eat?”

“I don’t _have _guests,” says Kyle. “I have a very small apartment and a very busy schedule. Speaking of which, do you think we’d be able to move Michael to your house? Not that I mind having him here—”

Michael snorts.

“—but this is a pretty small space, and it’s not like, ideal for a sick person.”

“Oh, I sold my house,” says Isobel.

“What?” says Kyle. “Where have you been living?”

“At my mom’s. And we definitely can’t bring Michael there. She has no idea we’re aliens.”

Kyle sighs. “Okay. Well, I’ve got to go to work. Call me or Liz if there are any emergencies, okay? Bye, Michael.”

After he leaves, Michael says, “Did you sleep in Kyle’s bed last night?”

Isobel smiles. “Yes. It’s very comfortable.”

“And where did Kyle sleep?”

Her smile widens. “The floor.”

“You convinced him to sleep on the _floor _in his own apartment? No wonder he was pissy this morning.”

“I didn’t even have to mess with his mind. He’s very chivalrous.” Isobel looks thoughtful. “Maybe I should have sex with him?”

Michael groans. “_Please _don’t.” 

“You’re right. I don’t want Liz’s sloppy seconds.” She notices the vomit basin, wrinkles her nose at it, and carries it gingerly into the kitchen. “Did you sleep okay? Any weird dreams?”

“Actually, yeah. I think I had a dream about your mother.”

“About _my _mother?”

“Yeah. She and my mother were like, married, I think.”

Isobel’s eyes light up and she comes back into the living room. “Our alien mothers were _gay married _to each other? In _space_? Michael, that’s awesome!”

“Um...yeah, I guess?” says Michael. He thinks that from what he saw in the dream, it was maybe not so awesome for his mother.

“Who were our fathers?”

“I don’t think we had them. They combined their genetic material to make us, or something? I don’t know, there weren’t a lot of details about that.”

“Holy _shit_, Michael!” Isobel grabs him by the shoulders. “Do you know what that means? You’re my _actual brother_. I knew it! I _knew _it!”

He laughs, weirdly pleased by how excited she is. “You did not!”

“I _so_ did! I’m never letting you live this down. What about Max?”

The laughter drains out of the room as they both remember Max is dead.

Michael says, “Max was your twin. Your actual twin. Your mother gave birth to the two of you, and my mother gave birth to me.”

“Wow.” She sighs and shakes her head. “I wish we could tell him.”

“Yeah.”

After a minute, Isobel says, “So what’s the deal with you and Alex?” She’s obviously trying to change the subject.

Michael pulls a pillow over his face. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Your emotions go off like a bomb every time you think about him, you know.”

“Yeah, so I try not to think about him.”

“You’re doing a really bad job.”

He tries to hit her with the pillow, but she grabs it with her mind and levitates it above his head out of reach.

“Hey, no fair!”

He sends the pillow flying at her, but she diverts it away with a flick of her head. It lands in the kitchen.

“Michael.”

“What?”

“You told me you love him.”

Michael deeply regrets ever opening his stupid mouth about this. “So?”

“So you love him, you’re having his baby, and you’re clearly incredibly pissed at him for some reason. The way you iced him out last night when he asked you if you wanted him to stay was like, very brutal.”

“It’s complicated, Iz. I don’t want to get into it right now.”

She pouts. “Come on! We’re stuck in this gross apartment together all day.”

“Yeah, and I _don’t _want to spend it talking about Alex.”

She rolls her eyes. “Ugh, _fine_. But I get to pick what we’re watching on Netflix.”

They end up marathoning _Queer Eye_.

“I should nominate you for this show,” says Isobel. “Maybe the Fab Five would be able to get you to move into an actual house and buy a pair of pants that aren’t jeans.”

Michael would like to see them try.

Isobel’s phone beeps and she frowns at it. “It’s Liz. She says Rosa’s coming over to take blood samples from us.”

“Great. The girl we framed for manslaughter is going to stick needles in us.”

Rosa shows up twenty minutes later with a cooler and a medical bag. It’s a deeply sketchy look for someone wandering around a residential neighborhood.

“You look like you just stole someone’s kidney,” says Michael.

Rosa ignores him. “You first,” she says to Isobel, gesturing for her to sit down and pulling out a syringe and plastic tubing.

“No offense,” says Isobel, “but do you know what you’re doing?”

“Relax,” says Rosa, “I used to be a junkie, remember? I know how to stick a needle in a vein.”

Isobel gives her a horrified look and Rosa bursts out laughing. “I’m joking! I started EMT training in San Diego. Seriously, it’ll be fine.”

An awkward silence descends as Rosa gets to work on filling what look like about twenty little vials with Isobel’s blood. Isobel seems like she’s desperately trying to think of something to say that’s not, “I’m sorry I murdered you,” and Rosa doesn’t seem very interested in helping her out.

After a few minutes, Rosa slides her eyes over to Michael and says, “So Alex and Maria had a huge fight about you at the Wild Pony last night.”

“What?” says Michael stupidly.

“_Oh_ yeah. Alex was talking to Liz, and he was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what Michael wants from me, he’s giving me all these mixed signals—’”

Michael can’t even deal with this. “I’m sorry, _what_? He’s complaining about _me _giving _him _mixed signals?”

“—and Liz was trying to be all sweet to him and like, a good friend because he was upset, but she was clearly getting fed up with his whining, and she was like, ‘Maybe you should just talk to him about how you feel,’ and Alex was like, ‘I keep trying to and it just pisses him off—”

“I can’t believe this,” Michael mutters.

“—and then Maria kind of lost her shit. She’d been like, angrily polishing glasses and eavesdropping, and at a certain point she couldn’t hold it in anymore, and she told Alex that he should forget about you because you’re toxic and manipulative–”

“_Wow_,” says Isobel.

Michael doesn’t say anything. He knows Maria’s mad at him, and he knows he deserves it, but it still hurts to hear that she’s completely written him off as a person.

“—and Alex got _super _mad,” Rosa finishes, pulling the needle out of Isobel’s arm and taping a cotton ball over the little drop of blood that wells up. “Your turn,” she says to Michael, taking out a new syringe and swabbing the crook of his elbow.

“What did Alex say?” asks Isobel, who’s gotten caught up in the drama and forgotten to be awkward around Rosa.

“He was like, ‘Michael’s a good person, don’t talk about him that way, you don’t know him like I do,’ which _really _pissed Maria off, and she was like, ‘Well maybe you don’t know him as well as you think,’ and he said, ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean,’ and she told him that when he was waiting for you at your trailer the day Max died, you were over at the Wild Pony having sex with her—”

“Oh my God!” says Isobel.

“_Fuck_,” Michael mutters.

“—and Alex was clearly like, very hurt, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Maria, so he was like, ‘Well, his mom had just died, what was _your _excuse for being a shitty friend?’ and she was like, ‘How _dare _you call me a shitty friend when you and Liz were totally fine keeping me in the dark about what’s been going on—’ and at that point Liz said they needed to finish having this argument later in private and dragged Alex out of the bar.”

“Geez, Michael!” says Isobel. “What did you do to Maria to get her so mad at you?”

Michael sighs. “I lived with her for three months and didn’t tell her I was an alien.”

“Yeah, that was not great of you,” says Rosa. She finished drawing his blood and starts packing the little vials into the cooler. “I’d be pissed if I were her.”

Isobel rolls her eyes. “Please, she needs to get over herself. I spent five years married to an alien serial killer, but you don’t see me taking it out on other people.”

Michael decides not to point out that she’s _absolutely_ been taking it out on other people, starting with him and ending with the drunk tourists at Saturn’s Rings. 

He says to Rosa, “Why are you telling me this?”

She shuts the cooler with a snap and stands up. “Because Alex and Maria are my only two friends, and now they’re not speaking to each other. I just want you to know what a mess you’ve made.”

“Wow,” says Isobel, after the door shuts behind Rosa. “That was _really _bitchy.”

Michael sighs. “She’s not wrong. It is my fault, at least partly. I knew there was a chance me being with Maria would screw up her relationship with Alex, and I did it anyway.” He’d been so fucking selfish, just like when he’d put Rosa in the driver’s seat of that car, not even considering what it would mean for her family.

“Hey, _she’s _the one who hooked up with her friend’s ex, not you.”

It’s sweet that Isobel’s trying to defend him, but it doesn’t make him feel better. “And I’m the one who led her on even though I was in love with someone else.”

“You were trying to move on. That’s not, like, a _crime_.”

“I used her to make myself feel better.” He swallows hard. It hurts to admit this, because goddamnit, he’d really _liked _Maria. She’d deserved so much better than a piece of shit like him.

“Michael.” Isobel puts her hand on his knee. “She was the only person who didn’t abandon you after Max died. Including Alex. Including _me_. You shouldn’t blame yourself for not wanting to push her away too.” 

Michael’s eyes are burning. He takes a deep breath and blows it out. He is _not _going to cry. He doesn’t deserve to feel sorry for himself. “I told Alex to leave. I—” His voice catches. “I blamed him for all the things his family did. I said that was all I could think about when I looked at him.”

“Oh, Michael.” Isobel puts her arms around him. “Did you mean it?”

He leans into her, squeezing his eyes shut tight to try to keep the tears in. “No. Yes? I don’t know. I think I just wanted to hurt him.” After a moment, he bursts out, “I’m so _angry _at him.”

“Why?”

Tears are sliding down his face now, and his nose is starting to run. He says raggedly, “Because...because he never loved me enough.”

For as long as he can remember, no one has ever loved Michael enough. Not enough to accept him without conditions, to take care of him instead of hurting him, to put his needs above their own. And maybe it’s selfish for him to want that, but why does everyone else get to have it and not him?

“_No!_” says Isobel. She’s crying too now. “_I _love you! I’m here! I’m _here_!” She holds him tight, rocking him. “I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_, I know I’m selfish and terrible and you probably shouldn’t forgive me, but I love you and I’m not leaving, I _promise_!”

“It’s okay, Iz.”

“It’s not. It’s _not_. God, I’m _sorry_.”

She keeps rocking him and crying, and eventually they both fall asleep. 

***

In Michael’s dream, his mother is reaching out for him, but he turns around and refuses to look at her. Behind him, bombs fall, and the city where he was born crumbles into dust.

***

Alex doesn’t come by the next day, or the day after.

Michael isn’t sure why he’s surprised, after what Rosa told him about Maria and Alex’s fight, but as the hours creep by and Alex doesn’t appear, Michael is annoyed to realize that he’s been expecting him, and that he’s...disappointed...that he’s not here.

It shouldn’t matter, he tells himself. He has Isobel. He doesn’t _need _Alex.

But here’s the thing about Isobel: she’s terrible at taking care of sick people.

Michael is still throwing up every hour, and Isobel is _not _reacting well. She does her best, but she’s clearly getting really tired of cleaning up his vomit. And in the meantime, she won’t leave him _alone_. She’s constantly hovering over him and asking if he needs anything, but he can tell she’s afraid he’ll ask her to do something gross, so he mostly just tells her he’s fine.

He finds himself missing the way Alex just let him...be.

He’s definitely not missing anything else about Alex, like his voice or his hands, or the way his too-long hair falls in his eyes. Goddamnit.

Here’s the other thing about Isobel: she’s not Alex.

Isobel is bored out of her mind after the first twelve hours of babysitting Michael and starts roaming Kyle’s apartment like a caged panther. She scribbles bizarre abstract patterns all over whatever scratch paper she can find and tapes them to the walls. When Michael asks her what the hell she’s doing, she says she’s trying draw the mineral the baby needs.

“You mean like it’s molecular structure?”

“_I _don’t know! I barely passed chemistry. You know that!”

“Yeah, because you wasted all that time planning junior prom.” She only passed because Michael spent the three weeks at the end of spring semester tutoring her every day at the Crashdown. 

She balls up a piece of paper and throws it at him. “It was _not _a waste! And _excuse me_ for not being a genius like you who can sleep through class every day and still get A’s on everything. Look, it’s just very complicated, okay? I have this sense of it when I do the glowy hand healing thing on you, but it’s hard to, like, describe in words. So, I’m trying to see if a visual representation will help.”

Michael’s not optimistic about how useful this is going to be. The drawings just look like scribbles to him.

On the second day, Liz calls Michael and tells him she’s trying to recreate the regeneration serum they made for Isobel, in the hope that it’ll reverse whatever damage the baby is causing by stripping his body of nutrients. She wants him to tell her everything he remembers about their research. And while in theory Michael’s glad that someone’s finally decided to consult him about his own goddamned medical care, it’s hard to give Liz a blow-by-blow of the six weeks they spent in a bunker together when his insides keep trying to climb up out of his mouth.

On the third day, Michael’s stomach starts to hurt, a sharp pain high on the right under his ribs. He doesn’t mention it to Isobel because he doesn’t want to freak her out. He figures it’s just a side effect of all the puking, like acid reflux or something. Kyle can’t come by that day because there’s a multi-car pile-up on the freeway and he ends up sleeping at the hospital in between surgeries, so Michael doesn’t ask him about it.

Liz keeps sending Michael texts about reagents and cellular mitosis. He does his best to answer, but his brain feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton and all his thoughts seem to take twice as long as they normally should. He doesn’t know if this is something he should worry about, or if it’s just a side-effect of being trapped in bed with nothing to do but watch TV while Isobel goes full on Beautiful Mind on the walls.

On the fourth day, Alex shows up.

He comes with a burger and fries from the Crashdown for Isobel and a pile of Michael’s notes on the regeneration serum that Liz is having a hard time interpreting.

Michael thinks about throwing a fit and telling Alex to leave, but he feels like hot garbage right now and that seems like way too much effort. His stomach hurts a lot worse than it did yesterday, and every time he throws up, the pain is so bad he almost passes out.

“Oh my God, thank you!” says Isobel, grabbing the food from Alex. “Kyle is such a barbarian. He has like, zero human food in his entire apartment.” She takes a huge bite of the burger. “Maybe I should nominate _him _for _Queer Eye_.”

Alex laughs. “He would be _way _too excited about it if you did.”

Isobel eyes Alex speculatively. “They could do a really good episode on _you_, actually. You’re a war hero, you’re gay, _and _you dress terribly. Viewers would eat it up.”

Alex doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he looks over at Michael, his brow furrowed. “Are you okay? You look...worse than you did a few days ago.”

“I’m great,” says Michael. He coughs and then winces as it sends a stabbing pain through his abdomen.

Alex is clearly not buying this, but he doesn’t push. He says to Isobel, “I know you’ve been here on your own with him for a few days. If you want, I can stay for a few hours so you can go get some fresh air or a change of clothes or whatever.”

“Oh my God, yes! Thank you!” says Isobel. Then she looks guiltily at Michael. “I mean, if that’s okay with you?”

Michael’s not going to force Isobel to stay in solitary confinement with him indefinitely just because he doesn’t want to be left alone with Alex. “No, that’s fine. Go take a shower or something. I’m tired of hearing you complain about Kyle’s hair care products.”

“He just has this like, organic, all-natural stuff that makes my hair frizz like crazy,” Isobel explains to Alex, shuddering. “When I complained about it, he was like ‘sodium lauryl sulfate is bad, blah blah blah.’ Honestly, I’d _rather _get cancer and die.”

Michael doesn’t actually notice the horrific damage that Kyle’s shampoo has supposedly done to Isobel’s hair, but then, before he moved in with Maria, he used to wash his hair once a week in a bucket, so he’s definitely not an expert. Maybe Isobel _should _nominate him for _Queer Eye_.

“All right. I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” says Isobel. She drops a kiss on Michael’s head and leaves.

Alex sits down next to the bed. He looks like he’s bracing himself for something. “Thanks for not kicking me out. I wanted to talk to you.”

Wonderful. Michael can guess what this is about. “Is this because I had sex with Maria three months ago while you were waiting for me at my trailer?”

Alex looks confused, like that’s the last thing he expected Michael to say. “What?”

“Come on, I know you know about that. Rosa told me about the fight you had with Maria at the Pony.”

Alex grimaces. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Rosa’s still a shit-stirrer.”

“Look, you can be pissed at me, but don’t take it out on Maria, okay? She didn’t know about what was going on with us. It’s not her fault.”

Alex stiffens, annoyed. “You don’t get to tell me who to be mad at, Guerin.”

“I just think you’re being too hard on her. I was a dick, I shouldn’t have slept with her, but that’s on me, not her.”

Alex blows his breath out hard. “Yeah, you were a dick, but that’s not the point. Maria knew how I felt about you, and she had sex with you anyway. And besides that—”

Michael can’t take it anymore “Oh really? And how is that, Alex?”

“How is _what_?” snaps Alex, clearly irritated at being interrupted.

“The way you feel about me.” Michael’s stomach is cramping horribly, and this is _so _not the time to be having this conversation, but he can’t help it.

Alex stares at him. “You know.”

“Do I?” Michael pushes himself up in the bed, his arms shaking with the effort. “Because you said that you loved me, _past tense_, and then you said you wanted to be friends, and then I told you all my secrets and you _ran away_. _Again_.”

“Guerin—”

“And then you showed up unannounced at my trailer on probably the worst day of my life and told me that you never wanted to stay with me in the first place—”

Alex’s face is shocked. “That’s _not _what I said!”

“You said you _wanted to leave_!” Michael screams. _God_, his stomach hurts. “Ten years ago, when you enlisted, I _begged _you to stay. I was still bleeding from what your dad did to me, and I begged you on my _fucking knees_, and now you tell me that you left because you _wanted to_? You wanted to join the _goddamned Air Force _more than you wanted to be with me?”

“God, Guerin, no!” says Alex, stricken. “That’s not what I—”

Michael cuts him off. “So how am I supposed to believe that you loved me?” He’s been wanting to say this for so long, and now that he’s started, he can’t stop. “If you love someone, you don’t _leave them behind_! You don’t _throw them away_ like they’re _garbage_!” He’s going to throw up again. He can feel it. Not now. _Please _not now. “_Fuck_!” He grabs the basin and vomits like his body’s trying to wring itself out. It’s excruciating, but even worse, what comes out of his mouth this time is _blood_, bright red floods of it, and oh _God_, that can’t be good. 

“Michael!” Alex yells, his voice high and panicked. “Oh shit, _Michael_!” He grabs Michael’s shoulders, trying to hold him up as he slumps forward. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

Michael fists his hands in Alex’s sweatshirt, holding on. “Hurts,” he gasps, and then vomits more blood into Alex’s lap. He lets his forehead thump down against Alex’s chest. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Alex cradles the back of Michael’s head with one hand and gropes for his phone with the other. He’s trying for calm, but Michael can hear the fear edging into his voice. “Don’t worry, I’m going to call Isobel. She’s going to come help you.” 

He dials, and Isobel picks up. Alex barely even lets her get to “hello” before he’s saying, “Isobel, you have to come back _right now_. Michael’s vomiting blood.”

Michael hears her say something indistinct, her alarm coming through even if the words don’t.

“Okay,” says Alex to Michael, pulling him close and wiping the blood off of his mouth with his sleeve. “She’s coming. She says she’s ten minutes away. Just hold on.”

Michael rests his head on Alex’s shoulder and pants, pain tearing through him.

Alex keeps rubbing circles on his back and saying, “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. Just breathe.”

Isobel gets there in five minutes. By that time, Michael, Alex, and most of the sofa bed are covered in blood. It’s...a lot of blood.

“Fuck,” says Isobel. “Fuck. _Fuck_. Lay him down, Alex.”

She gets on the bed and straddles Michael’s waist, shoving up his shirt and planting both of her hands on his chest. Light flares from her palms and Michael’s body arches like he’s been shocked. Energy surges into him, pouring fire along his nerves, and Isobel screws up her face with effort and screams. Michael would scream too but all his muscles are locked, and he can’t breathe. Then the light vanishes and he’s collapsing back onto the bed with Isobel on top of him, his ears ringing and colored spots swimming in front of his eyes.

Isobel gasps and rolls off him, shaking. “That was way harder than anything I’ve done before,” she says in a muffled voice

“Did it work?” Alex asks. “Is he okay?” He puts his hand on the side of Michael’s face, turning his head so he can see his eyes. “Guerin, are you okay?” 

“It worked,” says Isobel. “Mostly. He’s still sick but he’s not dying anymore.” Her words are a little slurred, and her eyes keep threatening to close, like she’s exhausted.

“He was _dying_?”

Michael is _so _tired. He reaches up to where Alex is touching his face and laces their fingers together, pulling Alex’s hand down so he can hold it against his chest. “Just stay for a little bit, okay?” he mumbles. “Then you can go. Just stay for right now.”

Alex says in a choked voice, “I don’t _want_ to go, Michael.”

That’s not what Michael asked. What Alex wants never seems to have much to do with what Alex actually does. “Please stay? Just for now?” he begs.

Alex says, “Yes, I’ll stay. I promise.”

Michael sighs and slips into unconsciousness.

***

Michael wakes up to Kyle pulling his eyelid back and trying to shine a light in his eye. “Stop it,” he mutters, turning his head and shoving Kyle’s hand away.

“Well, he’s conscious. That’s good,” says Kyle. He puts his stethoscope on Michael’s chest and says, “Take a deep breath.”

Michael’s chest hair is tacky with dried blood. It’s extremely disgusting. On the plus side, his stomach doesn’t hurt, and for the first time in weeks he’s not nauseous.

Kyle says, “His heart rate’s normal and I don’t hear any congestion in his breathing.”

“What _happened _to him?” demands Alex.

“Be patient, Alex, I’m not a magic eight ball. Michael, Alex said you were in pain earlier. Can you show me where?”

“I don’t know. Like, here?” Michael gestures at the upper right side of his abdomen.

Kyle palpates the spot. “Here?”

“Yeah.”

Kyle presses harder. “Does this hurt now?”

“No.”

Kyle sits back and shakes his head. “Well, from your symptoms, it sounds to me like you were experiencing acute liver failure. Which is crazy, because it’s almost always irreversible, but you’re not showing any signs of it now. Like, _any_. God, you guys could save so many lives with your alien powers if the government wasn’t trying to hunt you down.”

“Where’s Isobel?” asks Michael, looking around for her. She’s not in the bed next to him anymore.

“She’s asleep in my bed,” says Kyle. “Don’t worry, I made her eat a protein bar first.”

“Kyle, Isobel said he was _dying_,” says Alex.

Kyle rubs his face. “He probably was. Usually when patients start exhibiting symptoms like that, they have less than twenty-four hours to live, unless they get an emergency liver transplant.”

“Oh my God.” Alex sits down on the edge of the bed and puts his head in his hands.

“Hey,” says Michael, hesitantly reaching out to touch Alex’s back. “It’s okay. I’m fine now.”

Alex turns and glares at him. “It’s not _okay_. You were _dying _and none of us noticed until it was almost too late! What if this happens again? What if Isobel can’t get to you in time?”

Michael is saved from having to answer by Liz and Rosa arriving. Liz looks like she hasn’t slept in days. Rosa just looks bored.

When Liz sees how much blood is splashed all over everything, she starts swearing in Spanish.

“Please tell me you’ve got something, Liz,” says Alex. “Because things can’t go on like this.” He’s taken off his sweatshirt, but Michael’s blood has soaked through all the way down the front of his t-shirt. He’s also gotten blood in his hair somehow.

“No,” says Liz, looking around the room and biting her lip. “No, they can’t.” She frowns at Isobel’s drawings. “What’re these things?”

“It’s Isobel’s artistic rendering of the mystery substance that we need to heal Michael,” says Kyle. “It doesn’t mean anything to me, but I’ll admit it, I barely passed O-Chem. Does it look familiar to you at all?”

Liz takes one of the drawings down off the wall and stares at it. “It just looks like a bunch of lines and zigzags to me. I’ll...think about it, I guess. I have some other ideas about how to find this mineral thing that Isobel says you need. Whatever it is, it must occur in much higher concentrations on your home planet than it does on Earth. Like in the air or the water or something. If every member of your species got as sick as you are now when they were pregnant, you’d have all died out. So they must be getting it naturally somehow from their environment.”

“Great!” say Alex, with an edge in his voice that might be either sarcasm or panic. “We can just go to Michael’s planet and get some! Oh, wait, _we can’t_.”

Liz waves this away impatiently. “We don’t have the planet, but we do have something that came from the planet.”

“What, the ship?” says Alex. “It’s in a million pieces, and the government has most of it.”

“The pods,” says Michael, understanding.

Liz nods. “Yes, the pods. They’re designed to keep you alive, so they must have all the essential nutrients that you need inside of them. I’ve been analyzing the pod fluid to see if I can find anything out from it.”

“We never figured out how exactly it worked,” says Michael.

“Yeah, and I don’t want to just like, inject you with it, because I don’t know if it might be toxic if it ended up inside your body, or if it would hurt the baby or something. My first step needs to be sorting out what exactly is _in _the pod fluid and then I’ll go from there.”

“Do you need a mass spectrometer?” asks Kyle. “Because I can probably help you get access to one at the hospital.”

“I actually...um...have one,” says Liz. “I remembered what a pain in the ass it was trying to do research with only the junky equipment in Michael’s bunker—”

“Hey!” says Michael.

“—so I may or may not have broken into a warehouse owned by a medical supply company and...liberated...some items.”

“Yeah, how did you do that, by the way?” says Kyle.

Liz shoots a little conspiratorial smile at Alex. “Let’s just say I have a friend with a particular skill set who was able to help me.”

Michael can’t believe this. “Are you shitting me, Alex? You hacked a medical supply company’s security system so Liz could steal millions of dollars worth of equipment? After all the crap you gave me over that goddamned copper wire?”

_“Copper wire_?_”_ Liz whispers to Kyle.

Kyle just shrugs.

“For the last time, I didn’t actually give a shit about the copper wire, Guerin!” says Alex. “It was just a dumb fucking excuse! Do you want me to hack more things to prove how comfortable I am with your criminal lifestyle? Like, I don’t know, the Federal Reserve? The NSA? Amazon?”

“You should definitely hack all of those things,” says Rosa. “But not because of Michael. Just because it’d be awesome.”

“_Anyway_,” says Liz, “That’s what I’m working on right now. I’m hoping I’ll be able to figure something out before Michael has another near-death experience, but you should keep Isobel close just to be safe.”

After Liz and Rosa leave, Kyle sighs and slumps down over the kitchen table. “I’m never getting my apartment back, am I?” he says mournfully. “Isobel’s going to make me sleep on the floor for the next six months.”

“Dude, just make her share the bed,” says Michael. “She’s like a cat. If you let her get away with things, she’ll end up taking over your entire life.”

Kyle shakes his head. “I don’t have a death wish, man. It’s safer to just go sleep in the on-call room at the hospital.” He yawns. “Speaking of which, I should probably go do that now. I was just coming off shift when Alex called, and if I don’t get some rest, I’m going to be useless tomorrow.”

So Michael and Alex end up alone in the apartment again. Well, alone except for Isobel, who’s asleep and doesn’t count.

Alex looks at the bloody mess on the sofa bed and says, “I can’t fucking deal with this right now. I don’t even know if Kyle has more clean sheets.”

He sounds so defeated that Michael can’t help putting a hand on his arm and saying, “Hey, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” 

Alex says, “But you need to go to _bed_, and you can’t go to bed unless I change the sheets.”

It looks like Alex is maybe the one who needs to go to bed. He’s radiating tension and it seems like he’s about ten seconds away from crying or breaking something.

“So we’ll go sleep in Kyle’s bed with Isobel. It’s big enough.”

“We _can’t_. We’re covered in _blood_.” He looks down at himself in disgust. “And I can’t take a goddamned _shower _because Kyle’s bathroom isn’t fucking handicapped accessible.” 

Michael stands up, surprised at how easy it is after days of feeling like he’s going to faint every time he gets out of bed. “Come on. I’ll help you,” he says, holding out his hand to Alex.

Alex stares at him. “You’re going to help me take a shower?”

Michael shrugs. “Yeah, I’m feeling a lot better right now from whatever Isobel did.”

Alex shakes his head. “No, I mean...we have to talk, Guerin. About the things you said right before you started vomiting blood.”

Michael does not want to talk about those things. He wishes he’d never said them. Because yeah, Alex didn’t love him enough to stay, but who the fuck was Michael to ask that of him anyway? Alex was right, they’d barely known each other. They’d had sex one time. And he’d been a homeless teenager living in his truck. It wasn’t like he’d had anything to offer Alex, like a place to stay or money to help him get away from his dad. The Air Force had been the only way out Alex’d seen, and he’d taken it. And when he came back ten years later and discovered that Michael had turned into a trailer trash border-line alcoholic with a criminal record, why should Alex have stayed for him then, either?

Michael knows he needs to say these things to Alex, too, but he can’t. Not yet. It feels too much like letting him go.

Instead he says, “Can we just...not?”

Alex’s face tightens in frustration. “Guerin—”

“No, I mean we’ll talk about it, just not right now. Look, this was a shit day. We don’t need to make it shittier. Let’s just get cleaned up and go to bed. We’ll talk in the morning, okay?”

Alex doesn’t look happy about this, but he says, “Okay,” and lets Michael pull him to his feet.

In the bathroom, Michael turns on the shower and shucks out of his sweats and underwear.

Alex stands by the sink, uncertain. His eyes flick to Michael, then away.

Michael smirks. He considers for a second, then carefully pulls the I.V. out of the back of his hand and takes off his shirt.

Alex frowns. “Should you be doing that?”

“I feel fine right now. Kyle can put it back in later.” He tilts his head at Alex. “You can’t take a shower with your clothes on.”

Alex hesitates for a moment, then pulls his shirt off, a glint of challenge in his eye.

Michael lets his gaze slide over Alex’s skin, the muscles of his stomach, the divots of his hips. It makes him feel hot and strange to see his blood on Alex’s body, like he’s marked him.

Alex raises his eyebrows. “Are you going to help me shower, Guerin, or are you just going to stare at me?”

Michael is definitely eye-fucking Alex, but really, who can blame him? “What do you need me to do?”

Alex sits down on the toilet and starts taking off his prosthetic. “I usually sit down to shower. I have a plastic stool for it back at my cabin. I also have a bar I can hold onto for getting in and out of the tub. But Kyle doesn’t have one of those, so I guess I’ll have to hold on to you.”

“Yeah, whatever you need.”

Alex sets his prosthetic down and drops the liner on top it. Then he kicks off his jeans and boxers and sits with his head tilted like he’s waiting for Michael to make the next move. His cock is half hard against his thigh, pink and gorgeous in its bed of dark hair. 

Michael is _real _close to just dropping to his knees and begging Alex to let him suck his dick, but he did promise Alex a shower, and also he doesn’t trust his gag reflex right now.

“Well?” says Alex after a moment. “Are you going to help me up?”

Michael clears his throat. “Uh...yeah. Just give me a minute to brush my teeth first.”

The toothbrush doesn’t make him retch, which is a positive sign. He tells himself he’s only doing this because he’s tired of his mouth tasting like ass. Definitely not for any other reason.

He spits and turns back to Alex. “Okay, how do you want me?”

That came out way flirtier than he intended. But then, who the fuck is he kidding? There’s no way he’s going to be able to manhandle Alex’s naked body in a platonic manner. 

Alex rolls his eyes. “Just come here.” He slides his hands up Michael’s forearms until he’s holding onto his biceps and levers himself into a standing position. They’re so close like this, their chests almost touching, Alex’s breath on Michael’s face. Michael’s cock is fully hard now, and he can see Alex’s isn’t far behind.

“Help me sit down on the edge of the tub,” says Alex.

“What?” says Michael, who can’t stop thinking about how much he wants to lick Alex’s neck.

“I can’t step in,” says Alex patiently. “I have to sit down first.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Alex holds onto Michael as he lowers himself down to the edge of the tub, then swings his legs around and tugs on Michael’s hand. “Get in.”

Michael steps into the shower and lets Alex use him to pull himself upright. They stand there for a moment with Alex bracing himself on Michael’s shoulders, letting the water run over them.

“How are we going to do this?” asks Alex.

“Huh?” says Michael.

“I’m not sure I can wash myself like this. I mean, I can try...” Alex reaches for the soap, but as he turns, his foot slips a little and he has to catch himself on the wall.

Michael’s hands instinctively come up to Alex’s waist to steady him. “I can wash you.”

If he’s honest with himself, this is exactly what he had in mind when he suggested they take a shower together. And okay, he can see how this might count as sending mixed signals after all the stuff he screamed at Alex last night. It’s also probably a bad idea that he’ll regret later, but _fuck_, he almost died, and right now he needs this.

He doesn’t think about how it’ll probably be the last time.

“Guerin—” says Alex, frowning.

“Come on,” says Michael, letting his voice go low and rumbly in his chest the way he knows drives Alex crazy. “I let you wash my hair.”

Alex snorts. “You definitely enjoyed that more than I did.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Michael slides his hands up Alex’s sides and over his chest, drinking in the feeling of soft, wet skin under his palms. Blood swirls away between their feet and down the drain.

Alex gasps and tightens his arms around Michael’s shoulders. “Guerin. What are you doing?”

Michael leans forward and nuzzles at Alex’s neck. “Do you want me to stop?”

“_God_, no,” Alex growls, and pulls him close, getting a fist in Michael’s curls and wrapping his other arm around his waist.

Michael moans as their cocks slide together, shivering at the feeling of Alex’s naked body slick and hot against his. Then Alex is kissing him, hard and demanding, and Michael melts into him, whimpering in the back of his throat and pressing Alex up against the wall. Alex hooks the stump of his right leg behind Michael’s knee and arches up against him, making lightening shoot up Michael’s spine.

“God, _baby_,” he gasps, breaking the kiss and pressing his face into the crook of Alex’s neck as they grind against each other.

Alex makes a wordless, guttural sound and bites at Michael’s shoulder, the bright flare of pain sending a jolt of _want _straight through him. 

Michael moans, “_Alex_,” and mouths at that impossibly soft skin behind his ear. “_Fuck_, wish you could be inside me...never stop wanting it...think about it every time I see you...”

“_Jesus_,” Alex groans, and hooks one arm around Michael’s neck, sliding his other hand down to tease at the cleft of Michael’s ass.

“_Yes_, oh God, _please_,” Michael begs, and then muffles a choked-off cry against Alex’s shoulder as Alex shoves two fingers into him without any prep or anything. The burn of the sudden intrusion is perfect, a sweet ache that edges into pleasure as Alex presses further into him.

“_Nnnngh_, yes, more, _more_,” Michael babbles, hips thrusting helplessly, caught between the hot friction of his cock against Alex’s stomach and the unforgiving pressure of Alex’s fingers in his ass. 

“I bet if I took my time, I could get my whole hand up in there,” Alex murmurs in his ear. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Being all filled up with me?”

Michael shivers and whines, imagining it, just having to lie there and take it as Alex stretched him open like that.

“Yeah,” Alex says with soft satisfaction. “You’d like that.” Then twists his fingers and Michael comes with a wail, clutching at Alex and shaking.

Alex holds him as he comes down from it, petting his hair and kissing the side of his face. Michael can feel Alex’s cock hot and hard against his hip and it makes his stomach muscles clench with need. _God_, he wants that in him. But he doesn’t think there’s any way they can fuck in here without one or both of them slipping and dying. He can think of something almost as good, though. To hell with his gag reflect, it’ll be fine.

He slithers to his knees and holds Alex up with his hands on his hips, leaning forward to mouth at his cock.

“_Christ_, Guerin, what are you doing?” Alex gasps, grabbing at Michael’s shoulder to brace himself and pulling Michael’s head back by the hair.

“Let me suck you,” Michael pleads. “I’ll make it so good, I promise.”

“_No_, you maniac,” says Alex, exasperated and fond. “You haven’t been doing so well lately with putting things in your mouth. It’s going to really kill the mood if you barf on my dick.” 

“I won’t,” Michael insists. “I don’t feel sick at all. _Please_ let me?”

“Absolutely not,” says Alex. “But I’ll do something else you like. You have to promise not to let me fall, though, okay?”

Michael nods, and a little thrill goes through him at the pull of Alex’s fingers in his curls.

Alex keeps Michael’s head tipped back with a hand in his hair and moves his other hand to his cock. Michael tightens his grip on Alex’s hips, holding him steady against the wall. He watches hungrily as Alex begins to jerk himself hard and fast, the muscles of his ass flexing under Michael’s fingertips, his lower lip caught between his teeth. Alex’s cock is so beautiful, flushed a dark rose against the lighter brown of his hand, the satiny skin tight and swollen. Michael remembers what it feels like in his mouth, thick and smooth against his lips and tongue.

“Open your mouth, sweetheart,” Alex gasps, giving Michael’s curls a tug.

Michael does, and Alex makes a little choked sound and comes all over his face in hot pulses. It lands on his tongue, his cheeks, his eyelids, his hair. Michael licks his lips and swallows with a satisfied hum.

“God, you’re going to fucking kill me,” Alex mutters, and slides down next to him in the bottom of the tub. He pulls Michael’s head down and kisses him, chasing the taste of himself in Michael’s mouth. Then turns his head and begins carefully licking his own come off of Michael’s face. Michael gasps at the strange intimacy of it, but he doesn’t pull away, letting Alex’s tongue flick over his eyelids, his forehead, his chin. It should be weird, but instead it just feels...nice. Like Alex is taking care of him.

Finally, Alex puts his head down on Michael’s shoulder and sighs. “We shouldn’t have done that.”

That sounds uncomfortably like the beginning of a serious relationship conversation. Michael attempts evasion. “I know, right? I think I’m actually less clean now than I was at the beginning of the shower.”

Alex laughs and runs his fingers through Michael’s hair. “I’m sorry. I got kind of carried away.”

“Everyone thinks you’re so normal. They have no idea what a kinky motherfucker you are.”

Alex keeps playing with his hair. “I didn’t hear you complaining.”

Michael thinks about how turned on he got when Alex threatened to fist him and smirks a little bit. “Well, everyone knows I’m easy.”

Alex is quiet for a moment, stroking the side of Michael’s face. Then he says, “Michael.” It’s not the first time he’s called Michael by his name, but this time it’s clearly deliberate, like he’s weighed his options and made a choice. 

Michael’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to hear whatever he’s about to say. “Don’t, Alex.” 

“No, I need to tell you this,” Alex insists, his eyes serious and intense on Michael’s face. “When I left—”

Michael covers Alex’s mouth with his hand. “No.”

Alex makes a frustrated sound and licks his palm.

“Not yet. In the morning, okay? You can tell me in the morning.” He won’t be ready to hear it then, either, but at least later is better than now.

“Fine,” says Alex, pulling away from Michael’s hand. But he doesn’t look happy about it.

When they’re done rinsing off, Michael helps Alex into the bedroom and sits him down on the bed while he steals some of Kyle’s boxers and t-shirts for them to wear. Once they’re dressed, he crawls under the covers beside Isobel and Alex lies down next to him.

Isobel raises her head a little, her eyes only half open. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Did you two just have sex in the shower?”

“Um...yes?” says Michael.

“Good.” Isobel rolls over and burrows into her pillow. After a second she starts snoring.

On Michael’s other side, Alex’s breathing is deep and even. He fell asleep as soon as he hit the sheets.

Michael lies there in the amber glow of the streetlights outside, looking up at the drawings Isobel’s taped to the bedroom ceiling. (_The ceiling?? What the fuck, Iz._) For some reason, seeing them laid out all together like this reminds him of something. They don’t seem like random lines anymore, but like a pattern he feels like he should recognize. He turns it over in his mind, lazily, only half awake. Behind his eyes, the lines dance, reconfiguring themselves. _Crystals_...he thinks, as sleep wells up over him and carries him away.

He sleeps deeply and doesn’t dream.

Around four in the morning, Michael wakes up with an idea buzzing at the edge of his consciousness.

He pulls himself out of sleep, trying to catch hold of it, and realizes he’s cuddled up to Alex during the night. His face is mashed against Alex’s shoulder and he’s holding onto a fistful of Alex’s shirt. Alex is still asleep, his face soft, drooling a little onto the pillow. He’s so cute that Michael might just die. Everything about Alex is dear: the tiny hairs on the back of his neck, his eyelashes, the little crease between his eyebrows. Michael wants to eat him. He wants to _keep _him.

This tenderness, this bone-deep melting love terrifies him. It makes him stupid and greedy. It’s not fair that he can need another person so much.

Michael could wake him up and kick him out of bed. He could be real mean about it. But it feels so good to have Alex pressed up against him, warm and safe and _here_. Just for now. Just until the morning.

Michael gropes for Isobel’s phone on the nightstand and sends a text to Liz.

_isobel’s drawings=hexagonal crystal lattice with helical polymeric chains_. _gray selenium?? this is Michael btw_

Then he presses his face against Alex’s neck and slips back into sleep.

***

In his dream, Michael’s mothers are arguing.

“It’s not safe for us here,” he hears himself say in his mother’s voice. “If you would just agree to relocate to the colonies, or at least onto one of the battleships in orbit—”

Isobel’s mother’s nostrils flare, just like Isobel’s do when someone has deeply pissed her off. “And what kind of message would that send, if I abandon the homeworld?”

Frustration boils up inside him. They’ve had this argument over and over, every time he’s let her win, but he can’t do that anymore. “The homeworld is _dying_. Chemical weapons have poisoned three-quarters of the water supply. The air is full of uranium dust. How can you justify keeping the children here?” 

She flinches when he mentions the children, but her hands clench at her sides. Her stubbornness has always been the best and worst thing about her. “What about the people who can’t leave? The eight billion citizens who can’t afford passage to the colonies? They’re _my responsibility_. If I leave, it’ll look like I’m admitting that the rebels were right, that I’m _not _fit to rule.”

Michael knows he’s on the edge of doing something irrevocable. “Either you leave with me, or I leave alone. Either way, I’m going.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, sorry, this turned into a five chapter fic. The last chapter will be coming soon, I promise. Thanks for all the great comments.

Michael wakes up with Isobel plastered across his back and Alex tucked up against his chest under his arm. Their limbs tangled up with his are warm and loose, still heavy with sleep. It’s the first time in ten years he’s had everyone he cares about together with him and safe, with nobody bleeding or dying or crying. (Everyone except Max, who will never be there again.)

He doesn’t have a chance to enjoy it, though, because he immediately has to run to the bathroom and throw up.

“_Fuck_,” he mutters, pressing his sweaty forehead against the toilet seat. He’d been hoping that Isobel’s magical healing whammy would last a little longer.

“Michael?” calls Isobel sleepily from the bedroom. “Are you okay?”

“Did he throw up again?” Alex demands, his freaky combat instincts taking him from fast asleep to wide awake the moment he senses a disturbance. “Michael, did you throw up again?”

“I’m fine, Alex,” he calls, flushing the toilet and standing up to rinse his mouth out at the sink. At least the fainting hasn’t started again. Yet.

Michael hears Alex start swearing violently under his breath as he tries to get out of bed and realizes that they left his prosthetic in the bathroom last night. Michael picks it up and brings it to him before he can do something crazy like army-crawl down the hallway to check on him. 

“I’m such a goddamn idiot,” Alex snarls as he pulls on his liner and shoves his leg into his prosthetic with way more force than necessary. “I should have made you eat something last night when you were still feeling okay. What the _fuck _was I thinking?”

“Well, you _did _in a way,” says Michael. “Make me eat something.”

“Ew,” mutters Isobel. 

“This isn’t _funny_, Guerin!” Alex snaps.

Michael can’t figure out why the hell he’s so pissed off. “Look, I’ll just have something now. When I first started throwing up like a month ago it was only once or twice a day. Kyle bought some of that disgusting Ensure stuff for me last week when he was still trying to find stuff I could digest. Maybe I’ll be able to keep that down.”

Isobel looks up from her phone. “Why do I have a text from Liz that says ‘feed Michael Brazil nuts’?”

“What?” says Michael.

She shows him.

“Oh, I texted her last night that I thought your drawings looked like the molecular structure of selenium.”

Isobel wrinkles her nose. “What’s selenium?”

“It’s in Brazil nuts.”

“That doesn’t help me, Michael!”

“It’s an element, Iz. It comes in several forms—”

Alex shoves a bottle of Ensure into Michael’s hand and says, “Drink this” in his scary captain voice. 

Michael eyes it with loathing. “This shit is vile, you know,” he says, but he unscrews the cap and takes a swallow. Unfortunately, he’s only able to keep it down for about thirty seconds before he has run to the toilet and puke again.

“Okay,” he says, wiping his mouth with that back of his hand. “I guess we’re back to the part where I can’t eat anything.”

Alex slams his hand into the wall. “_Fuck_!”

“Jesus, can you calm down?” says Michael. “It’s not that big a deal. We know how to handle this.” 

“No, I will not fucking calm down!” Alex yells. “You almost _died _yesterday, and now it’s been less than twenty-four hours since Isobel healed you and you’re already really sick again!”

“Liz is working on a cure,” says Michael. “She’s going to have it figured out soon.”

“But what if she doesn’t? What if what happened yesterday happens again and Isobel can’t save you? Is this really worth you _dying_, Michael?”

_Here we go_, thinks Michael. “Look, Alex, I know you don’t want me to keep this baby. But that’s not your goddamned decision, okay? So stop hinting that you want me to get rid of it. I’m not changing my mind.”

“_Whoa_,” says Isobel. “Okay. This apartment is way too small for me to be here while you have this fight, so I’m going to go. I’ll see if Whole Foods has Brazil nuts. Call me if Michael starts bleeding again.” She grabs her purse and practically runs out the door.

Alex drags his hands through his hair and glares at Michael. “I never told you that I didn’t want you to keep the baby! I just—”

“Well, you definitely _implied _it when you kept asking Kyle and Liz all those questions about giving me an abortion!”

“Because I was worried that the pregnancy was going to kill you. Which it almost fucking did!”

Michael scoffs. “Come on! Are you trying to tell me that if not for the vomiting and the organ failure, you’d be excited about knocking me up?”

Alex sighs and looks up at the ceiling. “Look, I never thought I’d have kids, okay? It’s a lot to process.”

“So you admit you wish we weren’t having a baby,” Michael says flatly.

“I’m saying it’s fucking complicated!” says Alex. “How am I supposed to be excited about being a dad? _My _dad was a goddamned psychopath! And my mom left me with him! I don’t know what good parents are supposed to look like—I never had any! Not to mention, I’m an unemployed vet with one leg and PTSD! What the hell do I have to offer a kid?” 

Suddenly Michael just feels tired. Here they are screaming at each other again because Alex can’t live up to Michael’s expectations, and maybe it’s time Michael admits that the reason they keep ending up like this is because Michael’s expectations are just unreasonable. Alex is right—he has enough of his own problems without trying to deal with Michael’s shit too.

“Alex,” says Michael. “It’s okay.” 

Alex looks at him like he’s crazy. “What about all of this is okay?”

Michael gropes for words. “I mean...it’s okay that you don’t want the baby.” He bites his lip and sighs. “I need to stop getting mad at you for not wanting the things I want. I know it’s partly my fault that you keep leaving. I’m...a lot to deal with. I come on too strong. It’s like that attachment disorder thing that abused kids get. I just kind of...latched on to you, and it’s not your fault that you didn’t feel the way about me that I did about you. You were right when you said we barely knew each other. There was no reason for you to stay. I mean...” he laughs a little bitterly. “There still isn’t, really. I know I’m not exactly a catch, and now I’m also sick and pregnant with a baby you don’t want. Plus, I’m an alien being hunted by a rogue government agency. So...I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re only here because of the baby, because you think you have an obligation or something, it’s okay. You can go. I’ll be fine. You don’t need me fucking up any more of your life.”

Alex stares at him, horrified. “How...” He takes a deep breath and scrubs his hands over his face. “God, I know I’m shit at talking about my feelings, but how can I have screwed up _this badly_? How the _fuck _did I manage to make you think I didn’t love you?”

“No, I know you loved me,” says Michael awkwardly. It’s hard to figure out how to say this. He doesn’t want Alex to feel like he’s blaming him for anything. “You just...you didn’t love me the way I wanted you to. That like, Romeo and Juliet way, where you’d do anything to be with the other person, no matter what you had to give up.”

“Oh, _Michael_,” Alex whispers. And...oh. He’s _crying_.

“No, no, it’s _okay_, Alex,” says Michael, reaching out to take Alex’s hand. “I’m saying, it wasn’t fair of me to want that from you. Romeo and Juliet were idiots, anyway, right? It’s dumb to blow up your whole life for someone you’ve known for like, a day. You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

“Oh _God_,” Alex gasps, and slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor. He looks fucking _devastated_. “Yes, I did. I did everything wrong. I’m a piece of shit coward and I should have cut off my other goddamned _leg _rather than let you feel this way.”

“_No_, fuck, don’t _say_ that!” says Michael, kneeling beside him and clutching his hand helplessly. This was supposed to make Alex feel _better_.

Alex squeezes his eyes shut, tears leaking out from under the lids. “Do you know what I thought about in Iraq?” he asks hoarsely. “When things got really bad, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it back? I thought about you.” He opens his eyes and looks at Michael, his gaze watery-bright. “I thought, ‘_I have to get through this. I have to live, so I can see him again._’ And maybe you’re right, and it’s pathetic to feel that way about someone you only got to love for a day, but it’s what I did.”

“Alex,” Michael breathes, stunned.

“And when I lost my leg, when I was lying in a pool of my own blood with a blown-up Humvee on top of me and I thought for sure I was going to die, I told myself it was okay, because you were alive. You were out there somewhere safe and happy, and you were going to go on, even if I didn’t.”

Alex chokes on a sob, and Michael reaches up to brush at the tears on his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. He thinks about how disappointed Alex must have been when he came back to Roswell and found Michael living in a trailer, wasting his life.

“No, goddamnit, _I’m _sorry! You were _everything _to me and I was too scared to love you like you needed. But it wasn’t because there was anything wrong with _you_.” He takes Michael’s face in his hands, thumbs stroking over his cheekbones. Michael has never seen him this raw and exposed. Alex says, “I left you because I hated myself. I hated that you got hurt because of me, and I hated that I couldn’t protect you, and eventually that turned into me hating myself for loving you. And so I tried for ten years to kill that part of me, but I couldn’t, Michael, I _couldn’t_. Because as soon as I saw you again, it came screaming back to life, and at first I was so scared, because I couldn’t be the person I was trying to be and still love you like I did. But the more time I spent in Roswell, the more I realized—that the part of me that loved you was the only good part of me left.”

Michael wraps his arms around him, his grip tight and desperate. “Oh, Alex, _no_, that’s not true!”

Alex curls forward into Michael until his forehead is pressed against his chest. “I tried to tell you this before, but I fucked it up. I hurt you. I just _keep hurting you_ and I don’t know how to stop.” 

Michael leans his cheek against the top of Alex’s head. “It’s not just you. I hurt you too. I told you to leave. I fucked Maria. God, why did I do that?”

Alex laughs a little and rubs his wet face against Michael’s shirt. Then he straightens up and looks at Michael, serious and intense. “I—”

Suddenly they hear the front door open and Kyle yelling, “Alex? Michael?” There’s a note of alarm in his voice that makes the hairs on the back of Michael’s neck prickle.

“Shit!” Alex mutters, grimacing. He wipes at his face with his t-shirt and calls, “We’re in here, Kyle!”

Kyle comes into the bedroom and takes in the two of them huddled together on the floor, as well as Alex’s puffy, red eyes. “Um...sorry to interrupt,” he says. “It’s just that—” He breaks off and looks at them again. “Are you guys wearing my clothes?”

“We were covered in blood, Kyle,” says Alex. “What did you expect us to do? Wander around the apartment naked?”

“Ew, no,” says Kyle. “Okay, fine, point taken. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because we’re having an emergency! Alex, why haven’t you been checking you phone?”

Alex looks over at Michael. “Do you mean, like, in the last twenty minutes?”

“Yes, in the last twenty minutes! The alerts on mine have been going off non-stop! Someone breached the security you set up around the Project Shepherd bunker.” 

“Seriously?” Alex demands. He looks more annoyed than worried. “Are you sure it’s a person and not, like, a coyote?”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s a person! I saw the security footage!”

Alex sighs. “Okay, fine. I’ll go check it out. Give me your gun and your bullet-proof vest.”

“Excuse me, _what_?” says Michael. “You are _not _going to go _by yourself _to go confront some mysterious person in a sketchy bunker. What if you get shot?”

“That’s why I’m taking the vest,” says Alex calmly, and goes into Kyle’s bedroom to get dressed.

Michael trails after him. “What if they shoot you _in the face_? I think Kyle should go instead.”

“Because you’re fine with me getting shot in the face?” says Kyle. “Nice, Guerin.”

“Kyle isn’t trained for this,” says Alex, pulling on a pair of Kyle’s jeans. They’re too long for him, and he has to roll up the cuffs. It’s fucking adorable. “Seriously, Michael, it’s fine. I’m sneaking up on them, not the other way around. It’s not that dangerous.”

Michael thinks this sounds like bullshit, but he can see he’s not going to be able to talk Alex out of it. “If you’re going to go, you should take Isobel with you. She’ll be able to read their mind and tell you if you’re walking into a trap or whatever. And if you do get shot in the face, she can heal you.” Well, probably.

Alex frowns. “Isobel needs to stay with you in case you start crashing again.”

Michael waves this away. “My stomach hurt for like a day before I started vomiting blood. It’s not going to happen with no warning. And I have Kyle to keep an eye on me. Right Kyle?”

“Uh...yeah,” says Kyle, coming out of his closet with his gun and vest. Alex takes them and starts putting them on.

“Great,” says Michael. “That settles it. Isobel’s going with you.”

He gets his phone and texts Isobel, _are you still at whole foods? alex is coming to get you to investigate a break-in at his secret bunker_

She texts back, _yeah, fine_

“All right,” says Alex. “I’ll bring Isobel with me. But you have to promise not to die while I’m gone, okay?” He says it like it’s a joke, but Michael can tell it’s not.

“I promise,” he says. “But only if you promise not to die too. Otherwise, the deal’s off.”

Alex laughs. “Okay.” He hesitates for a moment, then steps forward and wraps his arms around Michael. It’s kind of a weird hug, because Michael doesn’t register what’s happening until Alex takes his lack of reaction as a rejection and starts to move away, and Michael has to awkwardly pull him back in. But it’s...nice, to stand here with Alex’s arms around him, Alex’s body pressed close to his, Alex’s breath in his hair.

Alex turns his head and whispers in Michael’s ear, “I love you. Present tense.”

Then he’s out the door and gone, before Michael can get his shit together to respond.

Kyle gives him the side-eye. “Something’s different with you two this morning.”

“None of your business, Kyle,” says Michael, sitting down in a chair and pulling out his phone.

He texts Alex, _dude, you can’t just say something like that and then immediately leave_

After a few minutes, Alex texts him back a smiley face.

Michael is still trying to figure out how to interpret that when men in hazmat suits break down Kyle’s door and fire a cannon full of anti-alien pollen into his face.

As Michael goes down under a pile of six goons who shove a bag over his head and cuff his hands behind his back, he realizes they’ve been really fucking stupid. The security breach at the bunker was absolutely a trap, but it wasn’t set for Alex. It was to lure Alex away, so they could get to _him_. 

***

Michael and Kyle are thrown into the trunk of a car and driven around on bumpy roads for what feels like hours before they finally come to a stop. Michael throws up in the bag over his head, which is _super _disgusting. He wishes he could go a week without getting puke in his hair, but God apparently hates him. Do aliens even believe in God? Another thing they should have asked Noah before Max deep-fried him.

Someone punches Michael in the head to make him stop struggling and then straps him to a gurney. From the muffled yelling behind him, it sounds like Kyle is getting the same treatment. He feels a needle prick in the crook of his elbow, and his mind goes slow and gooey, like molasses. _Shit_, he thinks distantly, _they figured out how to sedate aliens_.

He kind of loses track of time after that, and the next thing he knows he’s in some kind of freaky secret lab and people are sticking more needles into him. They’ve put him in a hospital gown and stuck a fucking suction tube in his nose, presumably to keep him from choking on his own vomit. He can feel it in the back of his throat, like a worm. He tries to say something, but all that comes out is a strangled moan.

A voice says, “It’s awake. You should give it more sedative.”

Another voice answers, “No, I don’t want to compromise the fetus. It’s still docile, though. Look.”

Someone slaps Michael hard across the face. It hurts, but his body doesn’t respond. His head just lolls to the side, a little trickle of blood oozing out of the corner of his mouth where his lip got cut on his teeth. His vision is going in and out of focus, and he can’t see the people who are talking except as white-clad blurs when they walk past his face.

“See?” says the voice.

Michael tries to scream for Isobel in his mind, but there’s only nothingness where she should be. His powers are completely dead, and he _can’t fucking move_.

This is really, really bad. Pathetically, stupidly, he wishes for Alex. But Alex doesn’t even know where he is. How is he supposed to come pull Michael out of this mess?

Fuck, is Alex even alive right now? Did they take him too? Did they kill him? Michael can’t even think about that, it’s so horrible.

He feels cold gel squirt onto his abdomen, and then someone is running an ultrasound wand over him.

The second voice says, “Look, there it is. God damn. I mean, I’ve read the files, but it’s pretty hard to believe until you see it for yourself.”

“Yeah, if I didn’t know better, I’d think that was a human fetus.”

“If this wasn’t classified as fuck, I could get so much grant money to study this.”

“Why do you think they look so much like us anyway?” the first voice wonders. “It doesn’t make sense, right? If they evolved on a whole other planet, why don’t they have, like, six legs and antennae?”

“You mean why aren’t they giant bugs?” says the second voice with a tinge of irony.

Michael is getting the feeling that voice number two doesn’t think much of voice number one’s intelligence.

“No! Well...I don’t know. Yeah?”

“Who knows what they look like back where they came from. If this one was planted here as a spy, it would make sense for it to look like us, for camouflage. Maybe they can make themselves look however they want.”

_We were fucking refugees, you dumbass_, Michael wants to yell.

“Do you think this one has human DNA? Is that what makes the hybrid pregnancy possible?”

“Maybe. Genome sequencing didn’t even exist as a field when the original subjects were pregnant, and then after the project was officially canceled, I don’t think anyone bothered to do any genetic testing. The guys who kept it going were a bunch of paranoid military types—they didn’t care at all about the science.” 

_Yeah,_ thinks Michael acidly_, that sure is the worst thing you can say about Jesse Manes—he doesn’t care about the science_.

“Do you think they’d let us do an amniocentesis on this one?”

No. No way. They are not jamming a giant needle into his kid to satisfy their fucking curiosity.

“Hmm...it’s a little early for that. We should probably wait a couple of weeks. We wouldn’t want to risk damaging the specimen.”

“But it’s already at thirteen weeks gestation. The longest any of the other subjects made it was fifteen. We might not _have _a specimen in a couple of weeks.”

“Well, then we’ll do the genetic testing after the autopsy.”

The voices move away.

Michael tries as hard as he can to move his fingers, call out, do _something_. He has to get out of here. He has to. He _has to_. Eventually someone comes back and pumps him full of more sedative, and he slips away into unconsciousness.

He wakes up again because someone is yelling.

“...When I told you about the alien sleeper cell in Roswell, it was because I thought you’d _destroy _them, not bring them here and play with them! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Fuck, Michael knows that voice. He hears it in his nightmares. It’s _Jesse Manes_. 

“You don’t know what these creatures are capable of! One of them killed fifteen people before it was stopped! You’ve put everyone in this building in danger!”

Michael should have known Alex’s dad was behind this. That permanent coma thing had been way too good to be true.

Somebody else says, “Sergeant, I know for a _fact _that you had over two dozen of these things locked up in a bunker without any government supervision for over twenty years. If they’re so dangerous, how are you still alive?”

“If you’ve read my files, then you know they killed Jim Valenti. One of them cooked his brain right in front of me. I couldn’t stop it.” His voice breaks like he’s barely holding back tears.

Michael can’t believe the nerve of this fucking guy.

“Sergeant, we’re keeping this one sedated and restrained at all times. I promise, it’s not going to be able to cook anyone’s brain. And anyway, it’s sick. If we let it go, it probably couldn’t even stand up.”

“What do you mean, it’s sick?” Michael thinks he hears Jesse Manes take a step forward.

“Tests have confirmed it’s pregnant with a human-alien hybrid fetus. It’s showing most of the symptoms the other pregnant subjects did before they died. No liver failure yet, but it’s only a matter of time—”

“You’re saying a human got it pregnant?” Jesse Manes interrupts.

“Yes, based on the blood tests. It—”

“Where’s my son?”

“Um...what?”

“Captain Alex Manes! Where is he?”

“How should I know?” This guy clearly thinks Jesse Manes is acting weird, but he can’t figure out why.

“If he’s not here now, he’s going to be. If he tries to get into the compound, arrest him immediately. Don’t believe anything he says.”

“Why? What’s going on, Manes?”

Michael can practically hear Jesse Manes’ teeth grinding. “He can’t be trusted.”

“O...kay...”

“Are you planning to let that thing carry its pregnancy to full term?”

“What do you mean ‘let’? We’re still trying to figure out how to keep it from dying.”

“You should let it die. In fact, you should kill it right now.”

“Excuse me?”

Jesse Manes starts pacing back and forth. “Have you ever thought about why they’re able to breed with us? It doesn’t make sense. It defies everything we know about evolution. So it has to be deliberate, right? It has to be something they did to themselves as part of their plan for infiltrating Earth.”

Michael is honestly surprised Jesse Manes even believes in evolution.

The other guy says, “That’s what we’re trying to find out, Manes. That’s literally the whole point of studying this.”

“No, that’s what they _want_,” says Jesse Manes. “They want to infiltrate _us_. They want to get into our _genes_, into our _children_, and turn them against us! We have to stamp it out _now_, before it’s too late!” 

The other guy has clearly had enough of this. “Okay, Sergeant Manes, this has been fun, but I’ve got other things to do. Why don’t you go get a cup of coffee, or something? Actually, make it decaf. You look a little agitated.”

“I don’t want—”

“Manes, get the fuck out of here before I call security.”

There is a long, poisonous pause.

“All right. I’ll leave for now. But you’re going to regret this.”

***

What feels like hours later, they roll Michael’s gurney down another corridor and lock him in a cell. The sedative’s starting to wear off. At least, he can wiggle his toes and mutter profanity. His powers are still suppressed, and his attempts to tug on his restraints make him feel like he’s going to pass out.

He’s still hooked up to about ten monitors, presumably in case he starts dying suddenly and needs to be electroshocked back to life. He’s sure there are cameras watching him as well, even if he can’t see them from this angle.

“Michael!” It’s Kyle’s voice. With effort, Michael cranes his neck from side to side, but he can’t see anything except the concrete walls.

“Where are you?” he rasps.

“I’m in the cell next to yours. There’s an air vent connecting them, but it’s got bars on it.”

“Alex’s dad is here.”

“Yeah, I know. He came and gloated at me. I should have shot the fucker when I had the chance.”

“I don’t think they have Alex. They said they didn’t know where he was.”

“Good. He can come rescue us.”

Michael’s not sure what Alex on his own is supposed to be able to do against a bunch of government agents with high-tech weapons, but he doesn’t want to freak Kyle out.

Instead, he says, “Kyle, can you do something for me?”

“Sure. What do you need?”

“Don’t tell them anything about my treatment. How long I’ve been sick, what you and Liz tried, what Isobel said. None of it.”

“Okay...” says Kyle slowly. “But...they might need to know that stuff if they’re going to keep you alive.”

“If they want to keep me alive, it’s not for anything good. They want to study me and the baby, and they’re going to use whatever they learn to hurt us and any other aliens they find.” _Like Isobel_, he thinks. “I don’t want to spend seventy years in a cell like my mom. I don’t want that for my kid. I don’t even want to _think _about what they’ll do to her, if she’s born.”

“Michael...” Kyle’s voice is hesitant, concerned. “Are you asking me to let you die?”

Michael blows out his breath and stares up at the ceiling. “Yes. If it comes down to it.” 

“Fuck. Michael...I don’t know if I can do that.”

Michael rolls his eyes. Why did Kyle have to go and grow a conscience? “You’re not like, morally obligated to try to keep your patients alive if they don’t want you to. And anyway, it’s not like we’re friends. You don’t have to try to pretend you’re going to miss me or anything.”

Kyle makes an annoyed sound. “Well first of all, you’re a _person_, so even if we’re not friends, I’m going to be upset if you die. Especially after I put so much work into keeping you alive. But more importantly, it’s going to _kill _Alex.”

Michael squeezes his eyes shut. He knows Kyle is right. “Alex doesn’t get to make decisions for me. And you definitely don’t get to make decisions for me based on what you think Alex wants.”

“Yeah, I get that,” says Kyle. “But I just think you might be jumping the gun here? I mean, we’ve been here for like, a day. All I’m saying is, let’s give our friends a chance to get us out of this before we sign a suicide pact.”

“I’m not asking you to _kill_ me, you dumbass,” Michael snaps. “And I’m not currently dying. Our stupid friends have to time to try to rescue us if they want, and believe me, I would _love _it if they did. But if they can’t, do _not _give these bastards any information they can use against me or my family. Do you want to be responsible for the government breeding a bunch of alien babies they can do science experiments on? Because that’s what’s going to happen if they figure out how to keep me from dying. And if you help them, it’s going to be on you.”

“Oh,” says Kyle, sounding ill. “Okay. Yeah. I won’t tell them.”

“Good.” Michael closes his eyes. “Now leave me alone. I’m tired.”

***

His mother is there again in his dream, but she’s not a memory. She’s sitting on the edge of the gurney he’s strapped to, looking down at him.

“I gave you a gift,” she says. “You’re not using it.”

He tries to twist his head away. “I don’t want your memories.”

She frowns at him. “You need them.”

“_Why_? Why do I need to see you being tortured for decades? What good could that possibly do me? I have enough nightmare fuel of my own without adding yours on top of it.”

Her eyes flash. “I’m your mother! Do you think I did this to hurt you? There are so many things you don’t know about yourself—things I never had the chance to teach you. You need them if you’re going to survive. Your child needs them.”

“But there are some torture memories mixed in there too, right? Yeah, no thanks.”

She strokes his hair, merciless in her love. “It’s not the pain you’re worried about. Don’t pretend. You don’t want to see his family hurting me. You don’t want to see him in their faces.” 

Michael shudders.

“You’re worried it will make you hate him. That you won’t be able to touch him if you see what they did to me.”

“Yes,” Michael whispers.

She shakes her head. “No. I saw him, your soldier. He’s nothing like his father. And your heart knows that.”

***

Michael wakes up when guards come to pull Kyle out of his cell. He listens with a kind of depressed boredom as Kyle tries to resist and just ends up getting punched a lot and then tased. Poor bastard. They drag him off somewhere, still twitching.

Michael has nothing to do for the next several hours except lie on his back and watch a few stray spiders crawl across the ceiling. None of them look poisonous.

He thinks about trying to go back to sleep, but he doesn’t want to have another argument with his mother’s psychic ghost, or whatever he’s supposed to call the echo of her in his mind that won’t leave him alone.

Every so often, his body decides it’s time to vomit again and starts to dry heave, but the suction tube in his stomach seems to be doing its job, so he doesn’t choke on his own puke. Wonderful.

At some point, some guys in lab coats come in and stick more needles in him. Michael thinks they must have taken at least a pint of his blood at this point. They also dose him with more sedative, which is not great. He loses time, and when he comes back to himself, the guards are throwing Kyle’s limp body back in his cell and slamming the door.

Kyle doesn’t sound good. His breathing is wet and raspy, and he’s not moving.

Michael tries to say something, but his tongue is an unresponsive lump in his mouth. He keeps at it, and eventually he manages to slur, “Kyle. Are you all right?”

Kyle coughs, and Michael hears him roll over onto his back. “Well, they electrocuted me for a while, and then they waterboarded me. So yeah. I feel great.”

Michael winces. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

Kyle says, a little desperately, “I didn’t tell them anything.”

“Thanks,” says Michael, feeling like an asshole. Like he could really be mad if Kyle _had _spilled after being fucking waterboarded. Jesus.

“No really, I didn’t.”

“I believe you.”

“Do you think Alex was ever tortured?”

“I don’t know,” says Michael. He really hopes not.

“I just kept thinking, if Alex was here, he wouldn’t give them anything. He wouldn’t break. He was always so much braver than me, even when we were kids.”

This is true, but Michael feels like agreeing with Kyle at this point would be too much like kicking him while he’s down.

Kyle says, “What was up with you and Alex yesterday morning—was it yesterday morning? Right before we got captured. There was like, definite sexy energy. Did you guys fuck in my bed?”

“Ew, no, Kyle! Isobel was in your bed.”

“But you definitely fucked somewhere in my apartment, right? Was it in the shower?”

“Kyle, it’s really weird that you’re asking me this.”

Kyle laughs shakily. “I just want to know if I need to burn my loofah.”

Under normal circumstances, Michael would rather jump off a building than discuss Alex with Kyle, but Kyle _did _just heroically resist torture to protect him, and also the guy sounds like he’s about thirty seconds away from a panic attack. He’s probably earned the right to use Michael’s shitty love life as a distraction.

“Okay, fine. We fucked in your shower. But we didn’t use your stupid loofah. That’s gross.”

“I knew it!” There’s a flailing sound that might be Kyle punching the air. “Does that mean you guys are working your shit out?”

Michael snorts. “We fuck to avoid having to work our shit out.”

“So you haven’t talked at all, this whole time?”

Michael sighs. “Ugh. No, we talked. I cried. He cried. I still feel like shit after it, but now I can’t even be mad at him anymore. It sucks.”

“What did he say?”

“He was basically like, ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’” 

“What?”

“That was his excuse for leaving, and for treating me like crap when he came back. He said it wasn’t because of anything I did. It was like, because he hated himself, or whatever.”

Michael can hear Kyle shifting around. “For what it’s worth, I think that’s true.”

“Then he said he loves me.”

“Well, duh.”

Michael makes a frustrated sound. “No, not _duh_. How was I supposed to know, the way he was acting? And if he loved me that much, and he still left—what’s to stop him from doing it again?”

Kyle is quiet for a minute. “For most of Alex’s life, he was either trying to do what his dad wanted, or doing the opposite of what his dad wanted to piss him off. Sometimes he tried to do both at the same time, like when he came back to Roswell last year. He damn near erased himself, trying to beat his dad at his own game. But that whole time, I don’t think he ever actually stopped and thought about what _he _wanted.”

This rings true, as annoying as it is that Kyle’s the one who said it.

Michael says, “But now he has?”

“Yeah. And he wants you.” 

The words settle over Michael like a warm, heavy blanket. _He wants you_. “How do you know?”

“Because he _told _me, dipshit! And because he looks at you with giant cartoon heart eyes whenever you’re together, and he’s always desperate to spend time with you, even when you’re a disgusting, puke-y mess. That’s fucking true love! No one’s even loved me enough to clean up my vomit without complaining! Not even my mom!”

“Your mom complained when you threw up as a kid?”

“Yeah. Loudly. In Spanish.”

Michael laughs. Then he says, “I don’t know if it’s enough.”

“If what is enough?”

“That he loves me. I mean, we’ve been horrible to each other. Not just him—me too. Maybe we just don’t work together.”

Kyle says, “It seems to me like you’ve never actually tried to _be _together. Like, in a relationship, not as chaotic secret fuckbuddies. I don’t think you can actually say you don’t work unless you give that a shot.”

Michael decides it’s a sign of just how fucked things are right now that he’s considering taking relationship advice from Kyle Valenti.

Suddenly all the lights go out. People scream. Distantly, an alarm begins to sound.

“Do you think that’s good or bad?” asks Kyle.

A voice crackles to life over the intercom. “Good evening, Project Shepherd asshats. This is a public service announcement: whoever designed your security system is a goddamned moron.”

It’s Alex.

“Fuck yes!” screams Kyle.

Michael is so relieved Alex is okay that his mind whites out for a second. Then he starts wondering just what kind of dumbass stunt Alex is pulling here.

Alex continues, “Just so you know, I’ve hacked into your mainframe and rigged your entire base to explode.”

“Wait, what?” says Kyle.

“If Michael Guerin and Kyle Valenti don’t walk out the front door _unharmed _in the next fifteen minutes, I’m going to blow all of your sorry asses up. And I’ve had a _real _shitty week, so you don’t want to test me.”

“Oh my God, he’s crazy,” Kyle moans.

“Kyle!” Michael snaps. “Get up and try your cell door!”

“What?”

“If he hacked the security system, he might have unlocked our cells remotely.”

Kyle scrambles up and pushes on the door, which gets stuck for a moment, then opens with a bang that sends him stumbling out into the hallway.

“There’s no one here,” says Kyle. “I think they all made a run for it when he said he was going to blow up the building.”

“Great,” says Michael. “Now come get me out of here.”

Kyle comes in and starts unhooking Michael from the machines. When he pulls the suction tube out of his nose, Michael shudders and pukes up a stream of bile onto the front of Kyle’s shirt.

“I hate my life,” Kyle mutters. He tries to get his shoulder under Michael’s arm and pull him to his feet, but Michael’s limbs aren’t really obeying him right now, and Kyle’s still pretty shaky himself.

“Shit. Michael, you’ve gotta walk. I can’t carry you right now.”

“I’m fucking trying!” Michael snarls, as his legs flop around uselessly.

“Ten minutes,” says Alex over the intercom. “Then anyone still left in the building is going to be toast.”

“He’s not really going to blow us up if we can’t get out in time, right?” says Kyle.

Muted red emergency lights blink on, and they hear running feet. Michael turns his head, expecting to see guards with guns bearing down on them. Instead, Isobel, Liz, and Rosa skid into the room, dressed in lab coats with fake I.D. badges.

“Thank God you’re okay!” shrieks Liz, and throws her arms around both of them.

“Michael, you idiot!” says Isobel, punching his arm and then shoving Liz away so she can hug him herself. “I leave for ten minutes and you get kidnapped? What is wrong with you?”

“Michael can’t walk,” says Kyle, his voice muffled by Liz’s arm.

“I’ve got something for that,” says Liz, and pulls a huge syringe out of her pocket.

“What’s that?” Michael demands.

“It’s the regeneration serum, with a shot of selenium.” She stabs it into Michael’s neck, and he muffles a yelp.

“Jesus, Liz!”

“Sorry,” she says unrepentantly. “You were spot on about Isobel’s drawings. When I used a computer model to convert them from 2D to 3D, they matched the crystal structure of grey selenium exactly. And the pod fluid is full of it. When I treated a wad of your cells with this new serum, they perked right up and started dividing normally again. So hopefully that’ll get you on your feet and moving in a few minutes.”

“I can try to help it along,” says Isobel, putting her hand on his arm. It starts to glow, and Michael feels the effects of the sedation lessen, his legs becoming stronger, his mind more alert.

Then a gun goes off, and a pollen grenade hits Isobel in the chest and explodes, knocking her over backwards.

“Not so fast.” Jesse Manes is standing in the door with the empty grenade launcher in one hand and a pistol in the other. Behind him are his three older sons, all pointing machine guns at them. 

“Oh, fuck,” mutters Kyle.

“Iz!” says Michael frantically. The pollen settles over him like fog, and he can’t feel her, can’t feel _anything_.

Isobel coughs and rolls over, trying to push herself up on her arms. Liz reaches down to help her.

“Step away from the aliens, Elizabeth,” says Jesse Manes. “I don’t want to have to shoot you, but I will if you don’t cooperate.”

Liz straightens up and plants herself in front of Michael and Isobel like a fucking suicidal asshole. “Well, then I guess you’re going to have to shoot me.”

“Liz, don’t,” Michael pleads, pushing at her shoulder.

“Dad,” says Alex over the intercom. “I can see you on the security cameras. Put the gun down.”

“Or else what?” sneers Jesse Manes. “You’ll blow up the building? You don’t have it in you.”

Alex hisses, “If you think I’d even _hesitate _to kill you to protect the people I love, you’re stupider than I thought you were.”

“Oh, I believe you’d _try _to kill me. You always were an ungrateful little shit. But you won’t kill your friends. And you especially won’t do anything to hurt this _thing _you’ve disgraced yourself with.”

_Only Jesse Manes would think not being willing to kill your own friends was a character flaw_, Michael thinks.

“Dad,” says Alex sharply. “I’m warning you—”

Jesse Manes fires, and Liz screams, blood blooming on her leg. She topples over and lies there, swearing in Spanish. Rosa cries out and tries to run to her, but Flint points his gun at her and yells, “Stay fucking put!”

Jesse Manes strides over and grabs Michael by the hair, yanking him off the gurney. He jams the barrel of his pistol under Michael’s chin, pressing hard enough to make him choke. “Do you see this, Alex?” he yells. “I could kill this little pervert alien right now, and you couldn’t do _anything _to stop me!”

Alex is breathing hard, riding the edge of hysteria. “If you hurt him, you’re _dead_. I swear to fucking _God_, you won’t walk out of here. I’ll make you wish you’d never been _born_.”

It’s not his soldier’s voice. It’s the way he sounded ten years ago in the tool shed, defiant and terrified.

_Oh sweetheart_, Michael thinks, and he should be afraid, but he’s just so goddamned angry. _How did we let him do this to us again_?

Jesse Manes looks straight at one of the security cameras and says, “Do you really want to try to call my bluff, little boy? Because I think you know, I’m _not bluffing_. I’ll blow this thing’s head off—I don’t care what you do afterwards. I’m not afraid to die doing my duty to the human race. I can take the consequences. Can you?” 

Alex doesn’t say anything.

Jesse Manes smiles, slow and horrible. “That’s what I thought. Now shut up and stay where you are until I get there. We’re going to have a little talk.”

He starts dragging Michael toward the door.

“Uh, Dad?” says Flint. “How do you know where he is? Is he even in the building?”

Jesse Manes looks at him like he’s a piece of dog shit on his shoe. “He’s in the mainframe control room. The base’s security isn’t connected to any outside systems. It can only be hacked on site.”

Flint frowns. “Oh.”

His father shakes his head, disgusted. “Just lock these four in a cell and make sure they don’t get away. If they try to escape, shoot them. You two, come with me.” He jerks his head at his other sons.

As Michael is towed down a series of hallways, pain flaring in his scalp, hands scrabbling uselessly at Jesse Manes’ wrist, a strange thing is happening in his body. The regeneration serum is fighting the pollen and the remains of the sedative, forcibly activating his suppressed neurons one by one like exploding popcorn kernels. His brain tries to process the mangled sensory input his body sends it, but his nerves are hopelessly scrambled, and he ends up tasting the color yellow as the sound of the alarm sends bolts of agony shooting through him.

This is a real bad trip, he thinks. It’s worse than that time he did shrooms with Racist Hank. He wonders if his brain cells are actually dying, or if it just feels that way.

Jesse Manes throws Michael to the ground in front of what looks like a pair of blast doors. One of Alex’s brothers kicks him a few times for good measure, and he curls up with a gasp, trying to protect his stomach.

“Stop it!” says Alex over the speakers, his voice high and strained. “You’ve made your point! Just tell me what you want.” 

_This might be where I die_. The thought is hazy and distant. Michael doesn’t want to die. He wants Alex, who is on the other side of the door and safe as long as he doesn’t come out. _Stay in there_, he pleads silently. _Don’t let him hurt you_.

He can feel his powers straining to get out, flashes of Isobel three floors below, angry and scared, the heartbeats of everyone in the room. Alex’s heartbeat, behind the door, pounding with fear and rage.

Jesse Manes says, “I want you to come out of there with your hands on your head.”

No fucking way. If Alex comes out, he’s dead. Michael makes a titanic effort to use his powers to grab the gun out of Jesse Manes’ hand, but everything inside him is still wrong, and all he does is make the light fixture at the end of the hall explode.

None of the Maneses notice.

Alex says, “If I come out, you’ll kill him.”

Jesse Manes gets a knee in Michael’s back and yanks his head up with a fist in his hair, pulling his spine into a painful arch. With the other hand, he holsters his pistol and pulls a knife out of his boot, setting the edge of the blade against Michael’s jugular. “I can kill him right now and make you watch.”

Michael thinks it’s probably a really bad sign the bastard has switched to a weapon that’s ideal for torture rather than immediate execution.

_Let me out_! A voice rings through Michael’s mind—his mother’s voice, firm and demanding.

Let her out? What the hell does that mean? Jesus _fuck_, this is the last thing Michael needs. 

Jesse Manes trails the knife up the side of Michael’s face. “You think he’s pretty, don’t you?” he says to Alex, hate dripping from his voice. “This trap they set for you. They knew _exactly _what your weakness was.” Michael feels the tip of the knife bite into the skin of his temple next to his eye and then slash down over his jaw. He hisses in shock as blood begins to drip from his chin onto the floor.

_Let me out_!

_Go away_! he screams silently, and tries again to throw Jesse Manes off him with his mind. A spiderweb of hairline cracks appear in the ceiling and plaster dust rains down on them.

“Stop,” whispers Alex, pleading. “Don’t.”

Jesse Manes says, “He’s not going to be so pretty when I’m done with him. How do you think he’ll look with no nose? With no lips? With no _eyes_?”

He brings the knife back up to the corner of Michael’s eye and presses there, blood welling like a tear. Michael can’t help it. He whimpers. He’s had some fucked up shit done to him, but not this. _God_, never this. He wonders how much damage Jesse Manes can do before his powers come back. He wonders how much of him will be left for them to come back to.

The cracks on the ceiling spread, and the dust on the floor of the hallway starts to swirl. _No_! Michael wants to yell. _That’s not what I need_!

_Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! _His mother’s voice is an insistent pulse. He imagines her shrieking and clawing at the barrier around her in his mind.

Goddamnit, why is she doing this _now_? Why can’t she leave him the _fuck_ alone?

“Don’t!” Alex chokes. “I’ll do whatever you want, just stop!”

Jesse Manes traces the knife along the delicate skin of Michael’s lower eyelid. “You know what I want.”

Michael tries desperately not to blink. He imagines the knife twisting out of Jesse Manes’ hand and embedding itself in his fucking psychopathic skull.

The knife stays steady, but in the opposite wall, Michael thinks he feels a pipe burst.

“Okay,” says Alex softly. “I’ll come out.”

“No!” Michael yells. “Alex, don’t—”

Jesse Manes cuts him off by slamming his head into the floor.

_Let me out!_ _Let me out!_ _Let me out! _

All Michael can do is gasp for a moment, stunned by the sick pain of the impact. Blood pours from his nose and runs hot and coppery into his mouth.

_LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! _

Dimly, he sees the door opening, hears the calm, mechanical whir as it lifts slowly, an inch at a time. Alex is standing there, empty hands raised, tear tracks on his cheeks. He looks so small. Michael wonders if he’ll be the last thing he sees.

If it is, he’s not sorry.

Jesse Manes drops Michael on the floor and shoves the bloody knife back into his boot. Michael thinks about trying to grab his ankle and trip him, but it’s no good. One of Alex’s brothers has his gun trained on Michael, the other on Alex. He’d have to take all three of them out, and he can’t do that yet.

_LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!_

“Dad—” says Alex, and it’s a little boy’s voice, lost and helpless.

“You were always too weak to do what was necessary,” says Jesse Manes. Then he brings his gun up and fires.

Alex’s head snaps back with the force of the blast and blood sprays out behind him in a scarlet corona. He collapses and slides down onto the floor, his eyes glassy and sightless, a small red hole in the center of his forehead. His heartbeat is gone.

_“NO!” _screams Michael, and the hallway explodes. He blows the roof right off the building, and the chilly air of the desert night rushes in. A wall collapses and buries one of Alex’s brothers in a pile of rubble. The other one is lifted up and thrown a hundred yards in the opposite direction. He lands in a heap and doesn’t move.

Jesse Manes has been knocked off his feet and is struggling to stand up. He points his gun at Michael, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a rictus grin. “I knew you’d show yourself for what you are. You’re a monster, like the rest of them.”

Michael has risen into the air, bloody and terrible. He thinks he might be glowing. He doesn’t give a fuck. All he cares about is making Alex’s father pay for what he’s done. He sails across the space between them, reaching out with hands like fiery claws. Jesse Manes fires his gun at him, but the bullets shatter before impact, shrapnel ricocheting around them. The gun melts in his hand, and he screams. Michael grabs him by the face and burns the life out of him.

He hates it, the touch of this mind against his own, this man’s hatred, his delight in cruelty, his need to hurt, to dominate, to break. Most of all, he hates that he can feel what Jesse Manes felt when he killed Alex—nothing. He felt _nothing_ when he shot his own son in the head, like he didn’t even matter, like _Alex _was nothing.

As Jesse Manes writhes, dying, Michael forces him to feel what he himself has felt all these years, his love for Alex, for Alex’s gentleness, his sweetness, his goodness, all the things his father never valued in him. _He mattered!_ he screams silently, as he makes Alex’s father choke on just how deeply Alex had been loved, not just by Michael, but by Liz and Maria, by Rosa, by Kyle, by Mimi Deluca, by Alex’s mother far away, who had left her boys with a monster to save herself and never stopped missing them. _He mattered to all of us! But you—_you’re _nothing. _

The light goes out, and the first man Michael has ever killed falls at his feet, dead.

Michael sinks to his knees, shaking, and crawls over to Alex. He’s half-buried in the rubble, mud on his face, plaster dust in his hair. Michael gathers him into his arms and wipes at his cheek with a fold of his hospital gown. His face is peaceful, like he’s sleeping, but the back of his head is a jagged crater of shattered bone and brain.

_I have to get him back_, Michael thinks, but he doesn’t know how. It’s not instinctual, like killing had been. He doesn’t even know where to begin. And is it even possible to bring someone back from such extensive brain damage? Everything that made Alex _Alex _is gone, blown out the back of his skull with the bullet. If Michael somehow managed to revive him, would it even be _him_, or just a shell with no memory, someone else in Alex’s skin?

_Michael_.

He looks up, and _God_, he must be hallucinating. His mother is standing next to him.

_Michael_. She calls him again by his Earth name, the only name he knows now, and then by his Antarian name, a liquid slide of sounds in a language he no longer understands. She cups his cheek with her hand, and he leans into the touch. _Let me out_, she whispers, and her memories flow into his like sand into water.

In a dusty classroom, warm with later summer sunlight, a woman next to a colorful data screen is saying, _Space and time are made of energy_.

“String theory,” whispers Michael.

_If you can manipulate energy, you can manipulate space and time. This is how the dead can be restored to life long after brain death, or even dismemberment or disintegration. The healer gives them back the time they have lost and returns the body to its previous quantum state. _

It makes a weird kind of sense. Rosa had been dead for _days _before Noah stole her body. She’d been fucking _autopsied_. There was no way Max should have been able to bring her back if it was just a matter of repairing physical damage.

_But the resurrection comes at a price. The time given back to the dead must come from the living—from the healer, or from another person the healer has stripped of life. As you can see, the possibilities for abusing this procedure are extensive, which is why it was outlawed during the reign of..._

“Max gave Rosa his time. The potential energy of all the years left in his life.”

_Yes,_ says his mother.

“Someone has to die for someone else to live. A life for a life.”

_Yes_.

He says shakily, “I don’t understand the science.”

_You don’t have to. I do. You took his father’s time. Now give it to him. _

He puts his hand on Alex’s face, hesitates. “I don’t know how.”

_I’ll show you_.

She puts her hand over his, and the hot, caustic energy of Jesse Manes’ stolen life pours out of him into Alex. It’s a relief to let it go, but even more of a relief to feel Alex being pulled back to wholeness under his palms. _The body’s previous quantum state_. He can sense the shiver in space-time as the dead Alex in his arms is folded into the living Alex of ten minutes ago, the vibrations of his four-dimensional being resetting themselves to the moment before the bullet entered his brain. 

This is how Antarians fly their ships, he realizes. They don’t move through space, they bend it around them, slipping out of one point in three-dimensional reality and into another.

_Yes_, says his mother. _Not all of us can do it. You have the knack for it. You could have been a great navigator, if things had been different_.

It seems crazy to Michael that Max never realized he was doing this when he healed people. But then, Max had always been pretty bad at physics.

Alex’s eye fly open and he gasps, jerking in Michael’s arms. Panic surges through Michael’s body, and after a confused moment he realizes he’s feeling Alex’s emotions, not his own. He lifts his hand from the side of Alex’s face and sees his handprint shimmering there, bright against Alex’s skin. Shit. He probably should have put that somewhere less visible, like an arm.

“Hey, baby, it’s okay,” he says, holding Alex tighter. “I’ve got you.”

Alex is still feeling everything from the moment before his dad shot him, when Michael was bleeding on the floor in front of him and he knew he couldn’t do anything to protect him, just like he hadn’t been able to protect him ten years ago, and his dad was right, he had always been weak, and that’s why his dad would win, every time, because Alex wasn’t good enough—

“No,” says Michael, trying to push back against the flood of Alex’s self-hatred, trying not to get pulled into memories of their shared trauma—_Alex watching the hammer coming down on Michael’s hand, screaming for his dad to stop—helpless again watching his dad torture Michael on the security cameras, stupid, useless_—_triggering Michael’s own memory of the hammer, of Alex screaming, of Alex _dying _in front of him, the panic ricocheting back and forth between them in a vicious feedback loop_—and _goddamn_ but an empathic bond between two people with PTSD had _so _much potential to go wrong. “Alex, no,” Michael almost sobs. “He can’t hurt us anymore. I killed him. I _killed him_.”

And because he’s not sure if Alex is processing what he’s saying right now, he shows him—shows him Jesse Manes dying with Michael’s hands on him, Jesse Manes’ body empty on the ground, eyes staring at nothing, harmless. And maybe it’s fucked up, but it seems to work. Alex’s frantic breaths slow and his eyes focus on Michael’s face. “You’re alive,” he says, like he’s trying to convince himself of something he’s not quite sure he believes.

“Yeah,” says Michael, running his fingers through Alex’s hair, soothing him. “I’m okay.”

Alex frowns. “You have two black eyes and a broken nose.”

Michael laughs. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“I thought he was going to kill you in front of me.” Alex sits up, realization twisting his face. “I thought he was going to kill you, but instead...he _shot _me.” He touches his forehead, feels the skin there smooth and unbroken. Turns and looks at the blood spray on the wall behind him. “He killed me.”

“Yeah,” says Michael, his voice rough. It breaks his heart that Alex isn’t even _surprised_ his dad shot him in the head.

Alex puts his hand on Michael’s chest. “I can..._feel _you. Right here.” His eyes meet Michael’s. “You brought me back, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” says Michael, covering Alex’s hand with his own, not wanting to let him take it away. “I’m sorry, I know the thought-sharing thing is fucked up. And the handprint—I left a handprint on your face. I should have put it somewhere else. But it’ll wear off—”

Alex chokes on something that’s half laugh, half sob. “Michael! God, don’t _apologize _for resurrecting me!”

Michael feels a flood of Alex’s emotions so intense it’s like being stabbed, tenderness and exasperation and regret, the desire to take hold of Michael and shake him until he realizes how precious he is, how perfect, how completely lacking in the need to apologize for _anything_—

Michael’s breath catches, but before either of them can say anything, someone stirs and groans behind them.

Alex doesn’t even try to stand up. He just rolls and comes up on his knees with one of the discarded guns, the barrel aimed straight at his brother who’s trying to pull himself out of a pile of rubble.

The brother—what the fuck is his name? Harlan? Elton? No _Landon, _the thought flashing through Alex’s mind and into Michael’s—coughs and stares at Alex, wide-eyed. “You were dead.”

Alex’s body is trembling but his hands on the gun are steady. “I should kill you right now for what you’ve done.”

“Alex—” says Michael, alarmed.

“I didn’t know he was going to shoot you!” Landon blurts out, clearly terrified. “I thought he was just going to kill the alien!”

“You mean _Michael_?” snarls Alex. “The kid who took AP Calculus with you in high school? You were just going to stand there while our dad tortured him to death in front of you?”

Michael hears the thought that comes after that, that Alex doesn’t voice. _Just like you used to stand there when he beat the shit out of me and then tell me it was my fault for disappointing him_?

Landon protests, “It’s not a _person_, Alex!”

Michael feels Alex’s rage flare white-hot, knows what Alex is going to do the second before he pulls the trigger. As Alex fires, Michael knocks the gun out of his hand with his mind, twisting the metal into a useless blob and flinging it away. 

“Goddamnit, Michael!” Alex screams.

“Just leave him,” says Michael. “He has a broken leg—he can’t come after us.” As an afterthought, he scoops up the remaining gun and bends that out of shape as well. He’s not going to let Alex do something he’s going to regret later. He figures shooting your brother is the kind of thing that tends to haunt you, even if said brother is a dick.

“It’s a monster, Alex!” Landon insists. “You can see what it did to Dad! It’s just using you to get what it wants, and then it’s going to kill you too!”

Michael’s starting to think this dumb motherfucker has a death wish.

Alex looks at Landon like he’s trying to decide if it’s worth it to go over and beat his head in with a rock.

Michael says, “Come on, Alex. We have to go get the others.”

Alex sighs and holds his hand out for Michael to pull him up. “Okay.” 

Flint is an idiot and isn’t even watching the hallway. Michael throws him against the wall with a flick of his head and hands his gun to Alex. He thinks Alex _probably_ won’t shoot Flint.

“Alex, this isn’t you!” says Flint, staring at the handprint on Alex’s face. “He’s controlling you! You have to fight it!”

Alex just rolls his eyes and knocks Flint out with the butt of the gun.

Liz does not look good. Rosa and Isobel have tied their lab coats around her leg as an emergency tourniquet and Kyle is keeping pressure on the wound, but she’s pale and woozy, and she definitely can’t walk. 

“We have to get her to a hospital,” says Kyle. “She’s going to bleed out.”

“I can try to heal her,” says Michael. “It’s just—I kind of overdid it upstairs. I’m not sure what kind of shape I’ll be in if I do.”

Everyone looks at Michael’s handprint on Alex.

“What...did happen upstairs?” asks Kyle.

Michael and Alex exchange glances.

“My dad shot me,” says Alex bluntly. “Michael killed him and brought me back to life.”

Isobel’s eyes widen. “You figured out how to do it! But that means—”

Michael shakes his head. “We can’t bring back Max, Isobel.” He hates that he has to crush that hope in her eyes, but it’s better that he do it now before she gets carried away. “I saw how it works, in my mother’s memories. If someone’s dead, like _really_ dead, you can only bring them back by killing someone else. Do you think Max would want that? For someone else to die so he could live?”

Michael knows he wouldn’t. Max would hate every minute of his stolen life.

Isobel looks mutinous, but Rosa interrupts them. “Can you argue about this later? We have to get Liz out of here _now_!”

Alex’s eyes flick from person to person, assessing the situation. “If Michael starts to heal Liz and passes out, we’ll have two people who can’t walk instead of one. It’d be better for us to get Liz to the van before he tries. Kyle, can you carry her?”

Kyle picks Liz up carefully, trying not to jostle her leg. “Yeah, I’m fine. Where are we going?” He doesn’t look fine, but they’re kind of out of options, so Michael doesn’t say anything. 

Alex leads the way out of the base, now completely empty. As they run out into the clear desert night, they can hear helicopters in the distance and see searchlights sweeping toward them.

They pile into what Alex recognizes as Kyle’s sister’s minivan with the license plates removed. Maria’s at the wheel.

Michael can’t believe she’s _here_, driving the getaway car to break him out of top-secret alien prison. It makes him think that maybe she doesn’t completely hate him after all, if she’s willing to do this. Or at least that he didn’t destroy her friendship with Alex. The thought makes him almost dizzy with relief. 

“What the hell took you guys so long?” she demands. “Guerin, what happened to your face?” She sees Alex and does a double take. “Jesus, what happened to _your _face?”

Alex says, “Just drive, we’ll explain later. Go as fast as you can and keep the lights off.”

She rolls her eyes. “Aye aye, Captain.”

_Not a captain anymore_, thinks Alex, annoyed, but he doesn’t say it.

Michael turns to Liz. He can barely see her in the darkness. “How’s she doing?” he asks Kyle.

“Not good. She’s acidotic, and she’s having trouble breathing.”

Michael feels around for Isobel and grips her hand. “How are your powers doing, Iz?”

She grips him back. “Still suppressed, I’m afraid. Michael, are you going to be okay if you do this? You’re not going to...” she doesn’t finish the sentence, but he knows what she’s going to say. _You’re not going to end up like Max_?

Michael braces himself. “I’m going to be fine, Iz.” He’s actually not sure if that’s true, but there’s no way he’s going to let Liz die after she more or less took a bullet for him. What he’s about to do isn’t going to kill him, but it’s probably going to hurt a lot.

He feels Alex’s hand on the back of his neck, steadying him. Alex’s emotions are a mess, tension and adrenaline barely keeping him from collapsing into hysterical crying, but he...trusts Michael. He trusts him to be strong enough, to do what’s necessary to protect the people he loves. He always has, ever since they were seventeen and Michael put his own body in the way of the violence that was meant for Alex. He loves this about Michael, even though it scares him stupid, the way Michael will always put everyone else’s well-being before his own.

Michael smiles and shakes his head. He thinks, _You’re giving me way too much credit, sweetheart_. Then as Liz’s heart stutters in her chest, failing, he reaches out and pours his energy into her.

Lightening crackles along his nerves. As Liz’s eyes snap open, Michael’s world dissolves into static and he collapses backwards into Alex’s arms.

The van drives on into the night.


	5. Chapter 5

Michael’s dreams are a godawful mess. There’re too many people in his head right now, and all of them have had horrific things happen to them. 

A fire fight in Iraq becomes bombs falling on the capital city of Antar becomes Michael being beaten with a belt by the angry meth heads becomes Alex’s head being held under water by his dad becomes a truly disturbing scene of medical torture in Caulfield that’s so bad it finally wakes them up.

Michael jerks upright from a tangle of blankets, sweating and shaking. His heart is pounding and he can’t stop hyperventilating. He doesn’t know where he is. In front of his eyes he still sees the lab, the white coats, the tubes, the scalpels. He knows he’s having a trauma flashback—this isn’t his first goddamn rodeo—but this time it’s not even _his trauma_, which is really fucking unfair—

Alex is there too—Michael can feel his terror like he can feel his mother’s terror, their panic bleeding into his own—in this moment, he’s not actually sure who he is—human or alien, male or female, alive or dead—_sorry Alex, I’m sorry_—Alex doesn’t deserve to get dragged into this telepathic shitshow, he never asked for it—

Alex is repeating something over and over, rubbing his hand in slow circles over the bare skin of Michael’s back. It breaks through Michael’s dissociation, and he hears Alex saying, “Your name is Michael Guerin. You’re twenty-eight years old. You’re here with me. You’re safe. Your name is Michael Guerin. You’re twenty-eight years old. You’re here with me. You’re safe—” 

Michael squeezes his eyes shut and concentrates on Alex’s voice, reaching out blindly for him and brushing against the solid warmth of his shoulder. He grips it tight, fingers digging in, feels the pressure in Alex’s body, feels Alex shift his focus to the weight of Michael’s hand on him.

A memory—_Alex in group therapy, still in a wheelchair, angry, in pain, listening to the group leader talk about how to deal with PTSD flashbacks. “Focus on the here and now, on your body, what you can touch and hear and smell—”_

Alex slides his palm along Michael’s arm to the back of his neck, winds his fingers in his hair and tugs. The little flare of pain pulls him back toward himself.

Alex says, “Breath into your diaphragm. Here.” He puts his other hand on Michael’s stomach. “Slow, deep breaths. Make my hand go up and down.”

Michael feels Alex adjust his own breathing, feels him try to slow down his own heartbeat and radiate calm. Michael inhales and exhales against Alex’s hand, leaning forward to press their foreheads together. Alex smells like coconut shampoo and cinnamon tea. His fingers on the back of Michael’s neck are callused from his guitar strings.

His name is Michael Guerin. He’s twenty-eight years old. He’s here with Alex. He’s safe. Slowly, the panic seeps out of him.

When he thinks he can talk without crying, he says, “So you learned that in therapy, huh?”

Alex makes a wordless sound and pulls Michael against his chest, burying his face in Michael’s hair. “What the _fuck _was that? That never happened to you, did it?”

“No,” says Michael shakily, wrapping his arms around Alex’s waist. “It happened to my mom.”

“_Shit_.” Alex tries to pull away, but Michael won’t let him.

“No, stop, it’s not your fault. It’s got nothing to do with you, okay? Please don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Alex whispers fiercely against his temple, and through the handprint Michael can hear the half-articulated undercurrent of his thoughts clamoring, _Never again—never letting them take you again_—_you’re mine—you’re mine—they can’t have you_—

Michael trembles and hugs Alex tighter. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m here.”

Alex takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “You’re here,” he repeats, and his mind gives a happy little hum.

After a moment Michael thinks to ask, “Wait, where is here?” He pulls back and looks at Alex, suddenly alarmed. “Is Liz okay?”

Alex can’t seem to stop touching Michael, running his hands over his back, his arms, slow and soothing. “Yeah, Liz is fine. Kyle took her to the hospital and made up some story about a mugging at gunpoint, but it turned out after you healed her, she was barely injured anyway.”

Michael sighs. “Good. That’s good.” He takes in his surroundings. He’s in a dark room with a bed and about ten computer monitors. Frowning, he says, “Are we in another goddamn secret bunker? Because I don’t think I can handle that right now.”

Alex looks embarrassed. “No, um, this is my cabin, actually. Sorry about all the mess, I’ve been working on some…stuff. I took you back here to rest, since Kyle’s apartment is basically destroyed. Isobel said you were okay to sleep it off as long as I kept giving you selenium shots every twelve hours.”

Michael raises his eyebrows. “Every twelve hours? How long have I been out?”

Alex glances at his computer screen. “About…eighteen hours.”

“Jesus.” Michael flops back onto the pillow. After eighteen hours of sleep, he feels…surprisingly not terrible. He’s not nauseous at all and the regeneration serum seems to have healed most of his cuts and other injuries. It feels good to just lie here and not hurt. The sheets are soft and smell like Alex.

Then he has another horrible thought and flails back upright. “Won’t they be able to find us here? Like, Project Shepherd? The government? Whoever?”

Alex is there instantly, catching his hands and stopping him from getting out of bed. “No, no, hey, shhh. You don’t have to worry about that anymore.” His thumbs stroke over Michael’s knuckles. “No one is going to come after you ever again. I made sure of that.”

Michael frowns in confusion. “What?”

Alex looks a little sheepish, but also pleased with himself. “I…um…kind of blackmailed the U.S. government. I told the C.I.A., the Department of Homeland Security, and half-a-dozen other agencies that if Project Shepherd or anyone else ever bothers you or Isobel again, I’ll dump all the information the military has about aliens onto WikiLeaks. And if anything happens to me, or they like, launch a nuke at Roswell or something, the information gets released through an online dead drop. So they have an incentive to make sure no one fucks with us.”

Michael laughs and shakes his head. A dizzy lightness is buzzing through him. “Oh my God. That’s like…treason. You committed treason for me. The Air Force is never going to take you back now.”

Alex huffs in frustration and takes Michael’s face in his hands. “I keep trying to tell you this,” he says. “I’m never going back to the Air Force. I’m never going anywhere that you aren’t, okay? I’m in this with you _forever_, until one of us dies.”

Alex’s pulse is racing, and Michael can feel it pounding in his own blood. Alex is scared—fucking _terrified_—of the million ways this could go wrong, but he’s also telling the truth with all the righteous certainty of his soldier’s heart, and Michael knows, they’re both done running.

“I’m scared too,” Michael says softly, responding to the thoughts Alex hasn’t voiced. “I’m worried I’m going to screw this up. And I can’t lose you again, I just _can’t_.”

_I saw you die—I saw you _die—_and I knew—I knew_—

“You won’t lose me,” says Alex. “Even—” his voice catches. “Even if you decide you don’t want to be with me. Even if you like, I don’t know, marry Maria or something. I’m here for you. I’m here for the baby. You’re stuck with me.”

Michael’s throat is tight, and his eyes are burning. “You idiot, I don’t want anyone else. You’re it for me. You always have been, ever since we were kids. But Alex—I’m really fucked up. I don’t…know how to be a _person_. It’s like you said—I never had anyone to show me. And I just—”

“Hey, stop that,” says Alex, giving him a little shake. Gentle, not rough. “I know who you are. There’s nothing wrong with you.” _Don’t talk about yourself that way, you don’t deserve it, you’re so good, so good—_

Michael chokes on a laugh as tears spill out of his eyes. “I think we both know that’s not true.”

Alex laughs too. “Okay, fine, maybe you are fucked up. I don’t care. I’m fucked up too. You know that better than anyone. But I think…I’m less fucked up now than I’ve been in a long time. Maybe ever. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to make this work. You and me and our kid, together. Even if it’s scary. Even if it’s hard.”

“I want that too,” whispers Michael, and he feels Alex’s joy like the sun rising inside him. “I love you. You know that, right? I don’t think I ever said it before, but I do. I love you.”

“Yeah, I know,” says Alex, and kisses him.

Michael half sobs, half laughs against his mouth and climbs into his lap.

Telepathic sex, it turns out, is awesome. He can feel _everything _Alex is feeling, and what Alex is mostly feeling right now is overwhelming enthusiasm about Michael and various parts of Michael’s body, and how in general Michael is just the _best _and most fucking _precious _thing in the universe—

Then Alex discovers that Michael’s nipples are a lot more sensitive than they used to be, and he gets downright evil, holding Michael down and licking and sucking them into sore little points, keeping him just on the right side of overstimulation until Michael starts shaking uncontrollably.

“Oh God, I can’t—” Michael whimpers. “I can’t—please—”

Alex pulls back for a second to let Michael catch his breath, and Michael pounces on him and rolls them over, intending to get Alex’s cock in his mouth and tease the shit out of him in revenge. But when he slides his lips over the satiny skin of the head, the pulse of Alex’s pleasure hits him hard in his own belly, and he can’t help himself, he takes Alex as deep as he can, moaning as the sensation overwhelms him. He thinks he could come from just this, just his mouth on Alex, but Alex pushes him off and says, “No, I want—”

And Michael says, “_Yeah_—”

Then Alex is opening him up and sliding into him, and Michael feels the tight heat of his own body around Alex’s cock and Alex’s relief as he presses his face against Michael’s neck, _safe, safe, home_—and _oh_—

Afterwards, when they’re lying in a sweaty tangle of limbs, Michael asks, because it’s kind of been bothering him, “Does it feel…different…with me than with other guys?”

Alex raises his head from Michael’s chest and looks at him like that’s the dumbest fucking question he’s ever heard. “Of course it does.” _I’m in love with you, you idiot. _

Michael shakes his head. “No, I mean, can you tell that I’m different…inside?”

Alex frowns. “Inside where?” 

Michael squirms, annoyed that he has to spell it out. “Alex, I apparently have a vagina hidden somewhere in my ass. Are you sure you never noticed anything?”

“Oh.” Alex thinks for a second. “Um…no?”

Michael raises his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Michael.” Alex looks at him, fond and exasperated. “I don’t compare you to other guys when we’re fucking. I’ve compared every other guy I’ve ever been with to _you_.”

Michael wrinkles his nose, and Alex laughs and pokes him in the side. “Oh my God, you’re ridiculous. Before you ask, no, there weren’t that many other guys, and no, it was never as good with them as it is with you, so there’s no need for you to get weird and jealous like I can feel you doing.”

“I’m not!” Michael protests.

Alex raises his eyebrows at him.

“Okay, fine, maybe a little,” Michael mutters. “I know I don’t have a leg to stand on here.” Then he realizes what he’s just said. “Oh, shit! Sorry! I didn’t mean—”

Alex collapses onto the bed laughing. “I’m not going to get offended if you say the word ‘leg,’ Michael!”

Michael makes a grumpy sound, and Alex wraps an arm around his waist, snugging him in next to his body. He nuzzles at Michael’s neck, then whispers, his lips touching Michael’s ear, “With other guys, it was always just…awkward. They’d say I wasn’t using enough _lube_, or I wasn’t getting the _angle _right, or I was going too fast, or too slow. And then I’d get annoyed that their bodies didn’t work like your body.” He sucks Michael’s earlobe into his mouth, and Michael moans low in his throat. Alex says softly, “After you, I was ruined for anyone else.”

Michael shivers and turns to kiss him, sliding his thigh between Alex’s legs and burying his hands in his hair. Alex licks into his mouth, hot and hungry, then rolls them so that he’s on top, looking down at Michael with a predatory gleam in his eye. “Are you feeling insecure about your ass, sweetheart?”

“No!” says Michael indignantly, even though he is, a little.

“Hmmm.” Alex rubs his hardening cock against Michael’s hip. Michael whines. “I think maybe you need me to show you _just_ how enthusiastic I am about what you’ve got going on down there.” 

“_Fuck_,” Michael mutters, as his own cock begins to fill again.

Alex crawls down the bed and pushes Michael’s thighs apart, settling between them. “God, look at you,” he breathes, and strokes his thumb over where Michael is still slick and open from getting fucked earlier (_with _a condom, because Kyle’s safe-sex lectures are going to haunt both of their fucking nightmares).

“Alex,” Michael pants, not knowing what he’s asking for, just knowing he wants whatever Alex is going to give him.

Alex pushes his thumb into him, rubbing idly like he’s exploring. Michael twitches and gasps, sore and oversensitive and _so _hungry for it. 

Alex murmurs, “We’re going to have to investigate this alien biology situation properly. I wonder if you have a prostate _and _a g-spot?” He presses up with his thumb _just so_ and Michael moans, his back arching.

Alex smirks. “Yeah, whatever that is, other guys don’t have it there. It made me look like a real dumbass when I was trying to find it, let me tell you.”

Michael frowns and gasps, “Don’t talk about fucking other people when you’re _in me_.”

“Hey, you asked, baby.” Alex pulls his thumb out and teases at Michael’s rim with his fingers, playing. “You know, I guess you’re also wetter inside than other guys.”

Michael wriggles, embarrassed, but Alex just looks at him, gaze intense and possessive, and says, “It’s really fucking hot.” Then he leans in and gets his tongue right up in there with his fingers, and Michael completely loses the ability to speak.

Sometime later, they’re lying curled up with Alex’s head on Michael’s thigh. The handprint on Alex’s face is starting to fade a little, and with it the insistent pulse of Alex’s emotions inside Michael’s chest. Michael has mixed feelings about this. One the plus side, no more shared PTSD flashbacks. Still, that was hands down the best sex he’s ever had in his life. He’s idly wondering if he’s going to be able to go again before the handprint wears off completely, when his awareness of Isobel suddenly explodes behind his eyes.

Someone—someone is screaming as Isobel rips the life out of them, a mottled face contorted under her glowing red hands, Isobel half-triumphant, half-horrified as energy rushes into her in a hot, corrosive flood—

“What the _fuck_?” Alex gasps.

“Oh shit,” Michael moans. “Oh shit, Iz, _no_!”

Pain builds in Michael’s head until suddenly it’s over. The screaming stops. It’s quiet. 

“Did Isobel just _murder _someone?” Alex demands, borderline hysterical. “Jesus, I can’t believe this! How am I supposed to keep you safe if she’s running around committing felonies with her alien powers? I’m going to have to get my hands on the president’s tax returns to make the government cover this up!” 

“We have to go,” says Michael, sitting up and looking frantically for his phone. Where even _is_ his phone? He needs to talk to Isobel. He needs to talk to Isobel _right now_. “We have to go find her.” He’d like to think that if Isobel murdered someone, she had a good reason, but she’s always had a pretty flexible sense of morality, and anyway, she’s going to need help hiding the body.

“Yeah,” says Alex. “Yeah, let’s—”

Then the pain is back, worse than before, as now the energy pours out of Isobel and into—

Into—

Max.

Neurons in Max’s brain that have been dead for three months flare to life all at once, and so does the part of Michael that _is _Max, the space in his mind that’s been cold and empty since his brother sacrificed himself for Rosa like a fucking idiot—suddenly it’s awake and so _loud _after the silence, full of a confused babble of pain and disorientation and _Liz, where’s Liz_—

Michael laughs in disbelief. Yeah, that’s definitely Max.

“Michael!” says Alex. “Michael! What’s going on?” He’s holding Michael by the shoulders and looking freaked out, like maybe he’s been calling Michael’s name for a while and he hasn’t been answering.

“She did it,” says Michael, horrified and joyous. “She brought him back.”

***

So apparently what happened is that while Michael was unconscious, Liz and Isobel teamed up to kidnap a pedophile serial killer from death row and then drained him of energy to bring Max back to life.

This is _deeply _fucked up, and Michael’s not convinced that Isobel isn’t in the middle of some kind of supervillain origin story, but also Max is _alive_. He’s sitting in the middle of the Crashdown with a confused, dopey expression on his face, like he’s not totally sure what’s going on but he’s happy to see everyone.

Michael walks right over and hugs him, which is a little awkward because Liz and Isobel are each holding on to one of Max’s arms, but Max laughs and says, “Hey, buddy. I guess you missed me.”

“I did not,” Michael mutters. “I didn’t even notice you were gone.” But he squeezes Max tight one more time before he lets go.

Alex is yelling at Liz and Isobel for endangering Michael’s safety and also everyone else’s safety and ruining all of his hard work hacking into government databases.

“Alex, I just explained this to you,” says Isobel patiently. “No one can trace it back to us. I fried all the security cameras and wiped the memories of everyone who saw us. As far as the cops are concerned, it’ll be like the guy just vanished.”

“Wait,” says Max, looking concerned. “So everyone’s going to think that someone who murders kids escaped from prison, and is now just, like, on the loose? All the law enforcement agencies in the state are going to be losing their shit!”

Isobel shrugs. “That’s not my problem.”

Alex is not placated by this. “You have to stop using your powers on random people whenever you feel like it! No more weird vigilante murders! No more non-consensually healing drunk tourists! We are all going to lay low and do _nothing_, okay? Especially you, Isobel! We have the baby to think of now, so you’d all better act like goddamn adults!”

Isobel makes a grumpy sound and rolls her eyes.

Michael looks at Alex fondly. He’s extremely cute when he’s yelling at Michael’s dumb siblings.

“Wait, what baby?” says Max.

Michael’s stomach saves him from having to answer by emitting a shockingly loud gurgle.

“Oh my God, Michael!” says Isobel. “Was that you?”

Alex turns to him, worried. “Are okay? Do you feel sick?”

“No,” says Michael in wonder. “I’m…hungry.” For the first time in what feels like months, the thought of eating doesn’t make him want to vomit. His stomach gurgles again. God _damn_, he’s fucking _starving_.

Isobel frowns at Alex. “Did you forget to feed him again because you were too busy screwing?”

“Jesus, Iz!” says Michael.

Liz shoots Isobel a quelling look and says to Michael, “Kyle said that if you wanted to eat, we should give you something easy to digest, like soup, so I had my dad make _pozole_. I’ll get you some.”

“Thanks,” says Michael, as Liz goes into the kitchen and starts banging around. “Where is Kyle? Did he get any medical attention? Because he was in pretty bad shape.” 

Liz comes back out with a giant bowl of soup. It smells _amazing_. “Yeah, he ran into the E.R. with me in his arms screaming about how I’d been shot and needed help immediately or I was going to die, but then it turned out that I only had like, a scratch on my leg after you healed me, so the doctors thought he was hysterical and gave him a bunch of Ativan. He’s upstairs sleeping right now.”

Arturo’s _pozole _might be the best thing Michael has ever eaten. He wants to bathe in it. He wants to _marry _it. “God, this is so good,” he groans. “Your dad is a genius. He should be on Top Chef.” He turns to Alex. “Seriously, this is delicious. You should have some.”

Alex is staring at him with a weird, scrunched up look on his face. His emotions are harder to sense now than they were a few hours ago, but Michael can tell he’s feeling something huge and overwhelming. 

“What’s the matter?” he asks.

“I—” Alex breaks off, shakes his head, opens his mouth to say something else, and bursts into tears.

Michael drops his spoon and reaches for Alex’s hands. “Oh no, sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

“You’re _okay_,” sobs Alex, and cries harder.

The fuzzy edges of Alex’s thoughts flicker against Michael’s mind and he understands. He pulls Alex in and lets him get tears and snot all over the shoulder of his borrowed jacket. “Hey, baby, it’s all right. Yeah, I’m okay. We’re all okay. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

Alex collapses against him and shakes with the aftereffects of the terror he hadn’t let himself feel until now, stunned with relief and profound exhaustion. 

Michael says to Liz, who’s hovering anxiously by Alex’s shoulder, “It’s just some delayed stress reaction PTSD shit. All the crap we’ve gone through in the past week is catching up with him. He’ll feel better if he cries it out.”

And no wonder Alex is having a breakdown. How many fucking times have they both almost died in the past 72 hours? And on top of that, he hasn’t slept since the last night they spent in Kyle’s apartment, which was like two days ago. Michael probably should have made Alex take a nap instead of fucking the second time. They’re going to have to get better about shit like that.

Liz makes Alex take one of Kyle’s Ativan. Michael rocks and shushes him until his sobs trail off into gulping breaths, and he slumps against Michael’s chest, a warm, exhausted weight. Michael holds him close.

“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” says Max plaintively. “Why is everyone being so weird about Michael eating? And who’s having a baby?” He looks anxiously at Liz and Isobel.

Michael sighs. “You guys tell him. I’ve got my hands full here.”

It takes most of the afternoon to catch Max up on everything that happened while he was dead. Michael eats three bowls of soup. Alex dozes, curled up in a booth with his head in Michael’s lap.

When Max hears about Michael’s pregnancy situation, he veers between awkwardly congratulatory and freaked out at the prospect that he too might have extra reproductive organs he was previously unaware of.

“Do _I _have a uterus?” he asks Liz, perturbed. “Could _I _get pregnant?” He glances down at his own abdomen.

“Uh, I don’t know,” says Liz. “We could check?”

Michael snorts. “Why, are you planning on getting fucked up the ass any time soon?”

“Um, _no_,” says Max fervently.

Michael shrugs. “Then why worry about it?”

Kyle comes down at some point, topless and yawning in a pair of Liz’s pajama pants. Max does not look pleased about this, which is hilarious. After a while, Alex wakes up, and Michael makes him eat a milkshake and fries.

Eventually, they get to the events of last night, and Michael realizes he’s going to have to tell Max and Isobel what happened with his mom. They deserve to know.

He tells Max about the memories, how they were sealed up in his head and started to leak out. How he didn’t want anything to do with them, because he figured most of them were pretty horrible. Then he says, “But last night, she…spoke to me. She kept telling me to let her out. And…I did. That’s how I knew how to bring Alex back.”

He has to turn and look at Alex then, alive and unharmed next to him, with Michael’s handprint still glimmering faintly on his face. Alex squeezes his thigh under the table, reassuring him. _I’m here_.

Michael goes on. “So I have all of her memories now, whether I want them or not. It’s been a little bit…fucked up.” He takes a breath. “But the important part is, I know who we are, now. I know where we came from. And I know how to get back there.”

Beside him, he feels Alex stiffen.

Max says, eyes wide, “You know where our home planet is?”

Michael nods. “But that’s not even the craziest thing. Our mother—or, well, my secondary mother and your birth mother—” He breaks off and looks at Max, who is deeply confused. “I’ll explain about that later—anyway, our mother was the empress of the planet Antar.”

“Um…what?” says Max.

“Holy _shit_!” says Isobel. “You mean I’m an actual princess?”

Liz rolls her eyes and mutters, “_Ay_, _Dios mio_.”

“Yeah,” says Michael. “We are actual alien space royalty. But there’s more. Seventy years ago, when we were children, there was a war. A rebel faction on Antar was trying to depose the monarchy. My birth mother, the empresses’ royal consort, took us off planet to where we’d be safe. We were supposed to be going to a world that had been colonized by our species, but our ship malfunctioned, and we had to make an emergency landing on Earth.” He shudders as the memory suddenly assails him, the escape pods jettisoning, the hull cracking with the impact, people on the lower decks torn apart by the G-forces—

Alex makes an unhappy sound and Michael drags himself back to the present. “Well…you guys know what happened after that.” He looks at Max and Isobel. “But here’s the thing. _Your _birth mother wasn’t on that ship. She never left Antar. So for all we know, she could still be there.”

Isobel says, awed, “You mean, she could still be alive?”

Michael shrugs. “Maybe. If my mother was, she could be too. We don’t know how long our species is supposed to live. Or if she’s dead, maybe we have other family there who are still alive. Or maybe the whole planet is a radioactive wasteland. I don’t know.”

“But we could find out,” says Isobel. She looks hungry, as hungry as Michael had ever been to know he belonged.

“Yeah,” says Michael, a little reluctantly. “We could find out. I know how to build a ship. I know how to fly it. And I know where to go. The thing is…I don’t want to.”

“_What_?” says Isobel.

“Wait,” says Max. “You know how to take us back to our home planet, but you don’t want to go? _You_?”

Michael looks at Alex. “No,” he says. “I want to stay here.”

Alex grabs his hand and holds on hard. “I’d go with you,” he says. “If you wanted me to.”

“I know,” says Michael, smiling into Alex’s worried eyes and thinking that he might die of tenderness. “But I swear to God, I really don’t. I want the two of us to stay right here. You said it yourself, we’ve got a baby to think about. The interstellar adventures can wait.” 

Alex smiles back at him, soft and happy. Home. That smile is home.

“Does this mean you’re moving in together?” asks Isobel.

“What?” says Michael.

“Well, you can’t raise a baby in a trailer,” she says reasonably, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “And you probably shouldn’t try to raise it in Alex’s cabin, either. Rosa told me it has a creepy bunker under it. My friend Caitlyn is a real estate agent, she can hook you up with a nice condo.”

“I’m not moving into a _condo_, Iz,” says Michael, offended.

Alex rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. “Yeah, also, we’re both broke and unemployed right now, and we can live in the cabin rent-free.” He turns to Michael, hesitant. “That is, if you’re okay with that?”

Michael laughs. “Baby, you know I’m not going to complain. Anywhere with indoor plumbing is a step up for me. And the creepy bunker is a plus, honestly. I can move my secret lab into it.”

Isobel rolls her eyes. “You two deserve each other.”

“Hey, Iz.” Michael reaches out and touches her arm, suddenly serious. “Just because I don’t want to go looking for Antar doesn’t mean you can’t. I can show you how. I’ll help you get there, if that’s what you want.”

Isobel is silent for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she says at last. She looks at Max, who’s sitting in a booth with his arm around Liz, then down at Michael and Alex’s joined hands. “There’s stuff keeping me here too, for now. But…maybe later I’ll feel differently.”

“Okay,” says Michael, squeezing her shoulder. “Just let me know.”

***

Isobel insists on throwing them a housewarming party. She makes them a registry at Crate & Barrell with a bunch of stuff they don’t need, like wine glasses and dessert forks.

“I’m actually terrified right now,” Alex mutters to Michael, as Isobel shoves trays of frozen mini quiches into Jim Valenti’s ancient electric oven. “I tried to eat some carrot sticks, and she whacked me with a spoon because they were for the guests, apparently. I’m afraid if I go near the kitchen again, she’s going to stab me.” 

“Yeah, I’m sorry about this,” says Michael, rubbing Alex’s hand soothingly. “She gets really intense about party planning. It’s better to just stay out of her way.”

Kyle’s the first to arrive, with beer and a tiny baby onesie that says “I love my two dads” on it.

“This isn’t on the registry!” says Isobel, snatching the onesie and brandishing it at him. “I told you to get plates!”

“They have plates,” says Kyle.

“Yeah, _ugly _plates, from _Target_. The ones I picked out are handmade in France!”

Kyle shrugs. “I thought they could use something for the baby.” 

Isobel makes a disgusted sound. “The baby shower is going to be a _separate party_, Kyle!”

“It is?” says Alex, looking slightly panicked.

“We’ll talk about that later,” says Michael, taking the onesie away from Isobel. “Thanks, Kyle, this is really cute. Although it was kind of a dick move for you to bring beer when you know I can’t drink it.”

“I told him to bring it,” says Isobel, carrying the beer into the kitchen. “You can’t expect your guests to go without just because you’re not having any, Michael. That’s not good hostess etiquette.”

“Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t make me a hostess, Iz!”

“I’m using hostess as a gender-neutral term,” says Isobel. “‘Host’ just doesn’t convey the dignity and responsibility inherent in the position.”

Michael just shakes his head.

Rosa shows up next with a salad and a fifty-dollar gift certificate for an online sex toy store.

“Oh my _God_, why would you do this?” demands Isobel. “This is so inappropriate!”

Rosa laughs and winks at Alex. “I don’t know about that. I think they’re going to enjoy this a lot more than the panini press you told me to buy.” 

Something has changed between Rosa and Isobel since they broke into the Project Shepherd base together and then helped Liz commit multiple felonies. Isobel doesn’t treat Rosa like she’s made of glass anymore, and Rosa seems to enjoy figuring out how much she can wind Isobel up before she snaps and starts yelling.

There’s a weirdly flirty energy there that Michael doesn’t want to interrogate too much. He has enough of his own problems.

“Uh…thanks, Rosa,” says Alex, taking the gift card gingerly between two fingers. “This is really, um, thoughtful.”

Michael snorts. “Please, like you aren’t already thinking about what you’re going to buy with it.”

“Michael!” Alex glares at him and the tips of his ears turn red. Yeah, he definitely already has something in mind, the kinky bastard. Michael smirks.

Liz and Max come in lugging a crib and a bunch of diapers.

“Target was having a sale,” Liz explains.

Isobel sighs. “Did any of you even _look _at the registry?”

Max shifts uncomfortably. “Well, that seventy-dollar shower curtain with toucans on it was real nice, Iz. We just thought they might get more use out of this.”

The crib is pink with purple butterflies on it.

“It’s hideous,” says Isobel mournfully.

Liz rolls her eyes so hard it looks like she’s going to sprain something.

Max is crestfallen. “I thought it was cute.”

Michael puts his arm around him. “It is cute, buddy, it’s real cute. Come on, let’s go put it in the bedroom.”

He shoots a glare at Isobel over his shoulder and mouths, _“Behave_.”

Maria is the last to arrive, slipping in quietly without fanfare. The gifts she brings are a set of thick, 800-gram cotton towels from the registry and a crocheted baby blanket with a blue and red starburst pattern on it.

“Maria,” says Alex, holding the blanket in his hands like he’s not sure he’s allowed to touch it, “This is yours. I remember you showing it to me. Mimi made this for you before you were born.”

“Yeah,” she says. “She did. And now I want you to have it. For your baby.” She sounds a little hesitant, a little hopeful. Maybe a little sad as well.

There’s a look of wonder on Alex’s face. “You can’t give me this.”

“_Alex_,” says Maria, with a tinge of exasperation in her voice. “Yes, I _can_. It’s yours now. And anyway, this is what Mama would want.”

Alex makes a choked sound and wraps her up in a crushing hug. “_Thank you_,” he whispers into her hair.

Maria hugs him back hard. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I’m really sorry.”

Alex shakes his head. “No, _I’m _sorry.”

Michael thinks it’s probably time for him to gracefully excuse himself. He wanders over to Kyle, who’s eating mini quiches in the kitchen.

“These things are not filling,” says Kyle. “I’ve had like ten of them and I’m still starving.”

Michael pulls a bag of cheetos out from one of the cabinets. “Here, have some of these.”

Kyle looks at them dubiously. “You know those have no nutritional value, right?”

Michael shoves cheetos into his mouth. “Yeah, and I absolutely do not give a shit. I’m still trying to make up for not eating for a month.”

“But you’re still eating like, vegetables and protein, right?” asks Kyle. “And taking prenatal vitamins? And getting your selenium shots twice a day?”

Michael waves a hand. “Yeah, yeah, I’m doing all that. You really don’t need to stress, dude. Alex is on it. If anything gets even the slightest bit weird, he’s going to be blowing up your phone.”

Kyles nods, clearly relieved. “Sorry. Thanks for humoring me. I guess I just got used to worrying about you.”

The way he says this is so tentative and apologetic it makes Michael’s heart clench up. “Kyle,” says Michael, “You have nothing to be sorry about. The way I see it, my unborn child and I basically owe you a life-debt.”

Kyle’s forehead wrinkles up. “A what?”

Michael sighs. “I keep forgetting you know nothing about Star Wars. We’re going to have to fix that. But that’s not the point. The point is, you have absolutely earned the right to worry about me. Or to ask me for any favor you might need at any time. I’m serious.”

Kyle shakes his head. “You don’t owe me anything for helping you, Michael. I was just doing my job.”

Michael groans. “Ugh, don’t give me that shit about you just doing your job, we both know that’s not true. You’re—” He breaks off and grimaces. “Okay, this is really hard for me to say, but you’re a good guy. And you’re like family to Alex, which I guess means that you’re my family too, now. And…I’m lucky—” He scrubs his hands over his face and makes a gagging sound. “I’m lucky to have you in my life. Because you’re pretty great.”

“Wow,” says Kyle, deeply touched. “Thank you. That really means a lot, man. Can I give you a hug?” 

“…Yes,” says Michael grudgingly, and is immediately swept up against Kyle’s ridiculously muscular chest. Goddamn it, _of course _the asshole gives amazing hugs.

After a minute Michael says, “Okay, that’s enough. All this touchy-feely crap is making me itch. I think I’m going to have to go lie down in a dark room for a while.”

Kyle just laughs at him.

Alex and Maria are still having some kind of intense conversation in the corner, so Michael goes over to where Max is drinking a beer on the couch and watching Liz, Isobel, and Rosa play a very aggressive game of beer pong.

“Hey,” he says, sitting down and bumping Max’s shoulder with his own.

“Hey,” says Max, looking up and smiling.

Michael hasn’t gotten to talk to Max much since he came back. Not one on one, at least. Liz and Isobel haven’t seemed to want to let him out of their sight, which means that Michael hasn’t gotten to say certain things to his brother. But now that he’s here, he doesn’t really know how to start. He hasn’t gotten back into the habit of talking to Max easily, not like they used to, way back before Rosa died. 

Max seems to feel the same way, because he doesn’t say anything either. They sit in silence for a while, and Michael’s not sure if it’s companionable or awkward. He wishes he could have a beer too so he’d have something to do with his hands.

Finally he says, “Max, are you okay?”

Max tilts his head at him. “What do you mean?”

“Max.”

Max raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

Max sighs. “Okay.” Something passes over his face and suddenly he looks tired and hollowed out. “I get it. You’re worried about me. But I’m fine. Really.” He pauses again for so long that Michael thinks he might actually be done talking. But then he says, “Isobel says I don’t have the right to be upset.”

_Of course she did_. “I’m not Isobel.” He knocks at Max’s ankle with his foot. “Come one. Talk to me.”

Max looks up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry I healed your hand without asking. That was messed up.”

“What?”

“Alex told me you were mad at me for doing that.”

Michael stares at him. “When did you talk to Alex about me?”

Max grimaces. “It was, I don’t know, last week? He came over to see Liz, and I offered to fix his leg for him. He said no thanks, and then I maybe not so tactfully told him I didn’t understand why he was turning me down, and he got pissed and bitched me out for healing your hand without your permission.”

Michael groans. “Oh my God, Max!”

Max shifts, embarrassed. “Yeah, I felt like an asshole. But he made me understand why you were so upset about it when I did it. And…I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” says Michael. “I appreciate that. Thanks.” He’s quiet for a minute. Then he says, “Are you mad at Isobel for bringing you back?”

Max blows out his breath. “I don’t know. I can’t honestly say I’d rather be dead, you know? But the way she did it…” he trails off.

“Yeah.”

“She says I don’t have any right to complain, because I screwed up everyone’s lives by dying and she was just trying to fix the mess I made.”

_Oh, Iz. _Michael sighs. “I’ll talk to her.”

Max shrugs. “I don’t know, maybe she’s right. But I don’t…” He looks over to where Liz and Rosa are laughing and trash-talking Isobel. Rosa is drinking 7-up instead of beer and she’s shooting the ping pong ball into the cups perfectly every time. “I don’t regret bringing Rosa back. I’m glad she’s alive. I can’t _really _blame Liz and Isobel for bringing me back. If it were one of them, I’d do the same. I mean, I _did_, when it was Liz. And it’s not like I would have wanted one of them to die in exchange! But…” he trails off.

Michael finishes for him. “But it still bothers you.” 

Max takes another pull of his beer and grimaces. “Yeah. I feel…_wrong_, I guess. Knowing that she killed someone else for me, like that. I hate that she did it. I hate that now I’m living with it.”

Michael says, “Well, the guy they kidnapped was on death row, so he was going to die anyway. At least this way something good came out of it. But maybe that doesn’t make you feel better, because of Kantian deontology and two wrongs don’t make a right, and whatever.”

Max looks at him, direct and challenging. “Would you want someone else to die so you could live?”

Michael shrugs, uncomfortable. “Me wanting to be alive has historically been kind of a tenuous situation, so. I don’t really know how to answer that.”

Max’s face gets a sad, scrunched look on it and Michael says, “Sorry, that was a bad joke.”

They both know it’s not a joke, but Max doesn’t push.

Michael sighs. “Look, to be honest, I’m kind of freaked out by our ability to play God like this. There’s no reason why we should get to decide who lives and who dies. But when it comes down to it…well, we both know what we’ve done. What all of us have done.”

Michael looks at Alex, who’s gone over to the game and is now laughing and egging Liz on as she fails spectacularly at her turn and has to take a shot. He looks relaxed and happy the way he never used to, and it makes Michael ache. In those few horrible minutes when Alex was dead, there was nothing Michael wouldn’t have done to get him back.

He knows he’ll kill again if he has to, to protect what he loves, and he’s not sorry.

He knows Max isn’t sorry either, and that’s probably what’s bothering his brother the most. Max likes to think of himself as the guy in the white hat, but the things he’s done in the past year are starting to make him think he’s not. That maybe he never was all along. 

Michael says, “Isobel and Liz did what they had to do. So did you. So did I. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get to feel fucked up about it. It’s probably a good sign that you do. It means you’re like, moral and shit. And maybe we can all agree to just stop resurrecting people for a while until things calms down. Okay?” He elbows Max gently in the side. 

Max laughs softly. “Okay.”

Michael wraps his arm around Max’s shoulder and squeezes. “You know I’m here for you, right? I’m always going to be here. You don’t have to deal with this on your own.”

Max surprises him by turning and hugging him properly. “I know. And you know I’m here for you too, right? For like, the baby, and whatever else you need? I don’t know how to change diapers, but I’ll figure it out. And if Alex hurts you, I’ll kick his ass.”

“Oh my God, Max!” says Michael, but he’s secretly pleased, and a little part of him that’s been hurting since he was seventeen maybe hurts a little less.

A few minutes later when Michael is up getting more bean dip out of the fridge, Maria catches his eye from across the room. She smiles awkwardly and gives him a little half-wave. 

A jolt goes through his stomach and he considers pretending he didn’t see her or maybe diving out the window and making a run for it, but he figures he owes it to her to have a conversation, if that’s what she wants.

“Hey,” she says, soft and uncertain.

“Hey,” he says back. “I’m…I’m glad you came.”

She nods and looks down, her hand coming up unconsciously to pull at her necklace. “Yeah. Thanks for inviting me.”

This weird, formal politeness is almost as uncomfortable as when she wasn’t speaking to him.

“Um, thanks for the blanket,” says Michael. “It really meant a lot to Alex.”

She looks up. “Yeah?” Her expression is complicated, and he can’t tell what she’s thinking. Not that he was ever really very good at that.

“It meant a lot to me too,” he said. “I…I really hate how I fucked things up between us. You deserved so much better and I’m sorry.”

She sighs. “It wasn’t all your fault. I fucked up too, Michael. I didn’t…I didn’t realize how messed up you were, the entire time you were living with me. And I _should _have, if I’d been paying attention. I just…” She shakes her head. “I was just…happy, for once. You made me happy. And then when I realized it wasn’t real, I got kind of crazy.”

“It…” He swallows hard. “It’s not that it wasn’t real, Maria. I wanted it to work. I _wanted _to make you happy. I just…”

“You were just in love with Alex.”

He makes an unhappy sound. “Yeah. And…other things.”

“I should have realized that, too.” She laughs a little bitterly. “Some psychic I am, huh?”

He knows she’s blaming herself because being to blame means being in control, and being in control means she isn’t the victim here. He hates that she’s doing it, but he doesn’t know how to make her stop without upsetting her more.

It’s not fair, he thinks, that he gets to have Alex, and Maria ends up feeling shitty and heartbroken. She deserves to be happy way more than he does.

“I miss you,” she says suddenly, surprising the hell out of him. “Not even as a boyfriend, just as a friend.”

“Yeah,” he says, his chest feeling tight. “Yeah, me too.”

“I think I realized that for a long time, you were my only friend. I tried not to let you in, but you were always just _there_, fixing my broken sign or glaring at guys who stared at my ass or making dumb jokes until I smiled. And when you weren’t there anymore, I…missed that. I missed it way more than the sex.” She smiles. “Although the sex was admittedly great.”

“You were pretty much my only friend too,” says Michael. “Which is maybe a sad commentary on both of our social lives. But—God, Maria, you mean so much to me. I don’t…I don’t know how I can make up for what I did, but—”

“You don’t—” she breaks off and bites her lip, frustrated. “You don’t have to make anything up to me. I kind of…I kind of feel like maybe I should be making things up to you—”

“Hey.” He grabs her hand. “Stop that. Maybe we both fucked up, okay? But it doesn’t matter. I just want you to know that…I’m here for you if you need me. All right?”

“Thanks,” she says, squeezing his hand. “Same to you.” She tilts her head, wry and a little sad. “I don’t know if we can go back to the way we were right away, but…eventually. I’d like to. I’d like to be friends again.”

“Yeah,” says Michael, feeling suddenly free of a weight he hadn’t known he’d been carrying. “I’d like that too.”

***

After everyone leaves, Michael and Alex fall into bed together, too tired to do any cleanup other than putting the dishes in the sink for tomorrow.

Michael can’t believe he lives here now. That he gets to live somewhere with more than one room and a bed big enough that he doesn’t fall out of it when he has nightmares. That he gets to have Alex here with him in the bed every night, warm and soft and making sleepy little sounds when Michael snuggles up to him in the dark.

Usually Alex is out like a light when he lies down, a leftover from his time in combat when he had to be able to sleep whenever and wherever he could, but tonight he’s taking a long time to settle.

After an hour of listening to him sigh and roll over every few minutes, Michael reaches over and runs his hand down his back. “Hey.”

Alex turns onto his side and looks at him, his eyes dark and shadowy in the moonlight. “Hey.”

Michael rests his hand on Alex’s waist, rubbing his thumb over the warm skin of his hipbone. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Alex sighs. “I don’t know.”

Michael waits.

After a minute, Alex says, “There’s a crib in our bedroom.”

“Yeah,” Michael agrees.

“There’s a crib in our bedroom because in six months we’re going to have a baby.”

“Uh huh.” Michael thinks he knows where Alex is going with this. Maybe it’s a side effect of having been inside each other’s heads, but Michael is always pretty sure what Alex is thinking now. It’s weird, but it’s cut down a lot on their dysfunctional miscommunication.

“I just…” Alex turns his face into the pillow and his next words come out muffled. “What if I fuck it up?”

Michael wriggles closer so he can rest his forehead against Alex’s temple. “Fuck it up how?”

“What if…” Alex’s voice is so tiny it’s almost inaudible. “What if I start acting like my dad?”

“Oh baby, no.” Michael wraps Alex up in his arms and pulls him against his chest, tucking Alex’s head under his chin. “That’s never going to happen. Trust me.”

“But how do you _know_?” Alex demands, hiding his face in Michael’s shirt. He sounds lost, like a little kid.

“Because I know _you_, okay? I know every part of you. You’re nothing like him. Not in any way that matters.”

“But what if—I don’t know…what if I can’t give her what she needs? What if I mess her up for life and she hates me?”

Michael thinks about his mother and says, “This isn’t really my area of expertise, but I feel like everyone gets messed up by their parents in some way. Isobel never eats carbs because her mom is always complaining about her own weight, and Max thinks he’s invincible because his parents spoiled him, and Maria feels like she’s not allowed to need anything from anyone because she’s had to be the strong one in her family for so long. I’m sure we’ll do _something _wrong, because that’s just life. But there’s a difference between that and being an actual shitty parent, like your dad, or Liz and Rosa’s mom.”

“Yeah?” says Alex.

“Yeah.” Michael is quiet for a moment. “I can remember my own childhood now. Or, I mean, I have my mom’s memories of my childhood instead of mine, which is weird, but. It’s helped me to understand what the most important part of being a parent actually is. It’s mostly about just…being there. Being there and taking care of your kids. Loving them and not hurting them. And I know you can do that.” 

“You do?”

“Yeah. You showed up for me when I got sick. You took care of me when I needed you. And that was with me being a horrible shit to you like eighty percent of the time. So I know you have what it takes.”

Alex sighs and presses his forehead against Michael’s chest. “It doesn’t seem like it can actually be that simple.”

Michael cups the back of Alex’s neck and kisses the top of his head. “I don’t think it is simple. I think it’s really fucking hard. But, you know, we’ve done hard things before. Way harder things than this. All we have to do now is show up and love the people we love, and I think we can do that.”

Alex wraps his arms around Michael’s waist and holds on tight. “I couldn’t before,” he says softly. “But I think you’re right. I think I can now.”


	6. Epilogue: Six Months Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, you guys! Sorry these last two chapters took me so long. Real life has been a bitch. I really appreciate all the wonderful comments you left.
> 
> Just a brief note of warning: this chapter contains a graphic description of childbirth. Dead dove do not eat.

“Ow, ow, fucking Jesus ow _fuck_!” Michael snarls as the pain of another contraction rolls over him. “Goddamn motherfucking _shit_!”

He’s naked in a hot tub full of goo that’s supposed to amplify Antarian healing abilities. There are waterproof electrodes stuck all over his chest and his giant, pregnant belly, and for the past several hours all he’s done is make humiliating noises and leak things out of places he does not want to be leaking out of.

The only positive thing about this situation is that the goo is opaque like the pod liquid, so no one can see his dick.

“_Nnnnnnghaaaaaah dammnit!” _

“Breathe, Michael!” says Kyle as he hovers anxiously by Michael’s knees. “Remember those Lamaze videos I showed you? In through the nose—”

“Shut the fuck up, Kyle!” Michael yells. He throws he head back against Alex’s shoulder and pants as the contraction recedes. Alex is sitting behind him, wrapped around him chest to back. He’s naked except for his boxers, because of something about skin-to-skin contact reducing cortisol levels and stimulating oxytocin production—honestly Michael hadn’t been listening too much to Kyle’s explanation at that point.

It should be mortifying to have Alex sitting in a tub full of bodily fluids with him, but he’s so strung out right now he doesn’t care. He’s just glad Alex is here.

“Can’t you give him something else for the pain?” asks Alex, his voice tight and concerned. He runs his hands up and down Michael’s sides, like he thinks he can rub the pain out if tries hard enough. Michael melts against him, boneless.

“That’s what Isobel and Max are supposed to be doing,” says Kyle, frowning at them. They’re kneeling on either side of the hot tub with their arms immersed up to their elbows.

“Look, we’re taking the edge off,” says Isobel, “but there’s only so much we can do. This has been going on _forever_.” She sounds real cranky, like she does whenever she needs a nap and a snack. She also has goo in her eyebrows, which must be driving her crazy.

“I think what Isobel _means _to say,” says Max, shooting her a quelling glare, “is that we’re trying to conserve our energy in case something goes wrong.” 

Kyle glances over at Liz, who’s watching Michael’s vital signs and the baby’s on a bank of monitors. “How does it look over there?”

Liz gives Michael a reassuring nod and a thumbs up. “Still good!”

“Thank God,” says Kyle for the millionth time. “I _really _don’t want to have to do an emergency c-section.”

“I wish he’d stop talking about goddamned emergency c-sections,” Alex mutters. “It’s freaking me out.”

“He’s just scared he’s going to take out my kidney by accident,” says Michael. “Alien organs give him performance anxiety—ow fucking _Christ_!” He digs his fingers into Alex’s leg and whimpers as the next contraction hits him.

Isobel and Max put their hands on his shoulders and push warm golden light into his body. The pain lessens a little, but it still makes him whine and gasp as it wrings him out and leaves him shaking.

The worst part isn’t even the pain, it’s that the baby is full-on freaking out. She doesn’t have a very impressive emotional range yet, but PAIN and FEAR are definitely in her repertoire, and she’s been doing the telepathic equivalent of screaming her head off since his contractions started in the middle of the night.

_Shhhhh_, he thinks at her, trying to rub his own belly soothingly without dislodging the electrodes. She keeps screaming.

“Is she still upset?” says Alex in his ear.

Michael makes a wordless sound of frustration. “Yeah, she’s real pissed. And if she’s this mad at me now, just image what it’s going to be like when she’s sixteen and trying to sneak out of the house to smoke weed—_nggghhhh augghhhh_!”

Pain ripples through him again and Alex takes his hand and lets him squeeze it hard. It has to hurt, but he doesn’t complain.

Kyle says, “I think it’s time to check your cervical dilation again.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Michael groans. “Dude, when I asked you if anal fisting was safe during pregnancy, this was not what I had in mind.”

“Yes, and thank you _so_ much for mentally scarring me with that conversation,” says Kyle, putting on a rubber glove. “Now, like before, just lie back and try to relax.”

“I feel like I’m in porn,” Michael mutters, as he leans against Alex’s chest and stares at the ceiling while Kyle feels around in his asshole. “Some like really sick fetish porn. I bet someone on the internet would really get off on this.”

“Michael!” says Kyle, annoyed. “There is nothing sexual about this! I’m a _medical professional_. I give prostate exams _all _the time—_whoa_, okay, that is the baby’s entire head.” 

“Is it coming?” asks Liz, vibrating with excitement.

“Yeah,” says Kyle, pulling his fingers out. “Michael, you’re fully dilated now. When the next contraction comes, I want you push, okay?”

After that, things get pretty fuzzy for a while. He feels an intense pressure in his rectum, like he’s taking the biggest shit of his life. Which he kind of is, he guesses. It’s fucking gross, is what it is. He can’t keep track of how much time is passing because all he can focus on is how his body is trying to turn itself inside out and his baby is having an infant panic attack. Thank god Alex is behind him and not in front of him because he’s probably making some _real _unattractive faces right now.

Alex is murmuring a stream of nonsensical encouragement in his ear. “Come on sweetheart, you can do it, you’re amazing, you’re doing so good…”

Isobel and Max have their hands on Michael’s stomach, trying to calm the baby down. Michael thinks it’s probably a lost cause. The bottom line is, she’s being squeezed out of an asshole, and you can’t expect anyone to be happy about that.

Kyle keeps trying to get him to breathe and Liz is just jumping up and down chanting _push! push! push! push! _like she’s cheering him on for a touchdown.

Suddenly his ass is burning and tingling as it _stretches _around the baby’s head and Kyle is saying, “Stop! Stop! Stop pushing!”

“Make up your goddamned mind!” Michael snarls, as he pants helplessly. “Do you want me to push or not?”

“We want the baby to come out slowly,” says Kyle. “If you push right now, you might tear.”

Isobel makes a gagging noise. “Oh my God, that’s horrifying. Childbirth is horrifying. I’m never doing it.”

“Shut _up_, Iz!” hisses Max.

“Okay, now, Michael!” says Kyle. “_Gently_.”

Michael does his best. It hurts like _fuck_ and he doesn’t think there’s any way she’s going to fit—

And then suddenly she’s sliding out of him in a gush of fluid, and Kyle is reaching into the tub for her, wet up to the shoulders, pink-tinted slime splashing down the front of his scrubs.

“Is she okay?” says Michael desperately. “Is she breathing—”

Furious screams erupt as Kyle pulls a tiny, thrashing body up out of the goo.

“Oh,” says Michael. “_Oh_.”

He reaches out for her helplessly, and Kyle puts her on his chest. She’s red and squashed and covered in unspeakable things, and she’s _beautiful_.

“Hi,” he whispers, cupping her little head in his hand. “Hey, baby girl. You made it.”

“Oh my God,” says Alex in a choked voice. “_Michael._ You did it.” He reaches out and gently touches one small, flailing fist. The baby grabs his finger and holds on, her screams trailing off into disgruntled squawks.

Michael laughs, breathless. “She knows who you are. She wanted to know where you were.”

He has no idea if this is true, but it feels true. He’s crying. Everyone’s crying, except the baby, who’s just sort of mewling, still grumpy but much happier now that she’s being held and touched. He cradles her close with a palm on her back and strokes her cheek with his fingers. He’s never been so glad to have two working hands.

Alex kisses his sweaty hair, his neck. Michael can feel the wetness of his eyelashes on his skin. “You’re amazing,” Alex whispers again. “You’re both amazing. Oh, Michael, she’s perfect.”

Isobel and Max are touching the baby’s arms, her feet, saying hello. Isobel is whispering in a high-pitched little voice, “Hi sweetie, I’m your auntie Isobel. I’m going to be your favorite aunt, isn’t that right? Oh, yes I am. Oh, yes I am.” 

“We’ll see about that,” says Liz, but she’s smiling, as giddy as the rest of them.

Kyle sniffs and wipes at his eyes. “Fuck, I can’t believe we did it.”

Michael can’t stop laughing, even though he’s still crying. He’s just so grateful that on the first day of his daughter’s life, there are so many people happy to see her. _You’re going to be okay_, he thinks fiercely, holding her little body against his chest. _I promise. We all promise_. 

“So are you going to tell us her name now?” asks Max.

Michael shifts and twists his head so he can look at Alex, Alex’s arm coming around his shoulders to hold him steady. Neither of them had wanted to say the baby’s name until she was here. Maybe it was a dumb superstition, but it had felt like a jinx, like counting their one chick before it hatched. Alex grins at him, punch drunk and happy. “Yeah. Don’t you think?”

Michael grins back, helpless against the melting feeling inside of him, then looks down at his daughter. He loves both of them so much. He doesn’t know how he can love her this much when he’s just met her, but he does. He touches the tiny, immaculate shell of her ear. She’s his now, forever. “Her name is Kylie.”

Kyle chokes and drops his clipboard.

“Oh my God, that’s so sweet!” coos Liz. “Hi, Kylie! Hi, sweetie pie!”

“Um, _what_?” says Isobel.

Kyle trips over himself trying to pick up the clipboard and then stands there awkwardly. He looks like he’s been hit in the head. “I…um…wow. I don’t know what to say. That’s…wow. I’m honored. Thank you.”

“For what?” says Alex. “We didn’t name her after you. We named her after Kylie Jenner!”

“_What_?” says Isobel again.

“Yeah,” says Alex. “Don’t you know she’s my favorite Kardashian?” 

“Oh,” says Kyle, starting to turn red. “Sorry…I didn’t—”

“I’m joking, you dumbass!” says Alex. “Of course we named her after you.” 

“After you too,” says Michael, looking at Liz. “Kylie Elizabeth. That’s her name.”

“Ex_cuse _me?” says Isobel.

“Holy shit, are you serious?” Liz shrieks, pressing her hands to her chest. “Wow, I can’t believe it! Thank you so much!”

“Michael,” Isobel hisses urgently, grabbing at his elbow, “You can’t name the baby Kylie. That’s like, a stripper name!”

“Isobel!” says Max.

Michael laughs. “Don’t slut-shame my daughter, Iz. She can be a stripper if she wants to. After all, her dad is actual trailer trash. Don’t worry,” he says to Alex, “she’s just mad we didn’t name the baby after her.”

“Oh, I know,” says Alex. Michael can practically hear him rolling his eyes.

“I’m not mad!” says Isobel, glaring at them. “But if we’re talking about this, I _did _make it possible for her to be born. Like, she wouldn’t exist without me. And Isobel is just, like, objectively a better name than Kylie. If you wanted to think about it for a while.” 

“Isobel,” says Alex, “You’re already her godmother. Stop complaining.”

“Yeah,” says Michael. “And also, Kyle got tortured and Liz got shot, so they get the baby named after them.”

“Well, you could put my name in there too,” says Isobel. “It’s very classy to have two middle names. You know, like European royalty.”

“No, Iz,” says Michael firmly. “We’re not going to give the poor kid extra names she has to write out in kindergarten.”

“Whose last name are you going to give her?” asks Kyle, pulling out his clipboard again. “Is she going to be Kylie Guerin or Kylie Manes?” The clipboard has Kylie’s birth certificate on it. Per New Mexico state law regarding same-sex parents, Kyle’s had to write Michael Guerin under “mother” and Alex Manes under “father,” a legal absurdity that masks the even more absurd truth of an alien-human hybrid with two biological fathers.

“Uh…” says Michael, because as weird as it might seem, they haven’t talked about this. They’ve been focused on getting Kylie here in one piece, and Michael, at least, hasn’t had time to worry about whose last name goes where. He doesn’t think he really cares. Guerin isn’t really his name, anyway, it’s just something a social worker saddled him with when he was seven.

Alex seems to have some pretty firm ideas about what he wants, though. “_Definitely_ not Manes. Kylie Guerin. Write that down.”

“Are you sure?” asks Michael. “Because I don’t mind. Guerin’s an annoying name, anyway. No one can spell or pronounce it, and people are always asking me where it’s from, which is dumb because it’s like, French, and I’m from space, not France.”

“It’s your name,” says Alex. “I like it. And more importantly, it’s not the name of any of my genocidal fuckbag family members. I’m going to take your name anyway when we—” He breaks off suddenly.

“Wait, what?” says Michael.

“Oh my God!” says Liz.

“Um…nothing,” says Alex. “Never mind.”

“No, seriously,” says Michael. “You’re going to take my name when we what?” He twists his head around to look at Alex, who is giving him a trapped deer-in-headlights stare.

“Um…get married?” says Alex in a small voice.

Isobel lets out a high-pitched shrieking sound.

“Are you proposing to me?” Michael demands, incredulous. “Alex! Are you seriously _proposing _to me in a tub full of medical waste right after I squeezed a person out of my ass?”

“No!” says Alex, panicked. “I mean, yes? I didn’t mean to! I had a whole thing planned! I was going to wait until you were recovered from the birth and the baby was big enough to leave with a sitter, and then I was going to take you out somewhere fancy. I was going to go down on one knee, maybe put the ring in the champagne glass, hire a flash mob…”

“Jesus!” says Michael. “Please don’t do _any _of those things! I mean a fancy dinner, sure, that sounds good, but for the love of _God_ do _not _hire a flash mob!”

“Okay,” says Alex. “Um…sorry?”

Michael makes a frustrated sound. “No, don’t be _sorry_! I mean, obviously, yes, I’ll marry you. That goes without saying!”

“It does?” says Alex.

“Fucking Christ, of course it does!” says Michael, overwhelmed with exasperation and fondness. “I’ll marry you right now if you drive me to the courthouse. Kyle might have to carry me up the steps, I’m not sure I can walk—”

“No one is going to the courthouse!” says Kyle. “I want to keep you and Kylie under observation for at least twenty-four hours before I let you go home—”

“Shut up Kyle,” says Michael. He slides the hand that isn’t cradling Kylie up into Alex’s hair and winds his fingers in it, holding on. Looking into Alex’s eyes, he says softly, “I’m going to marry the shit out of you. Okay?”

“I fucking love you,” says Alex, and kisses him.

“You know, you guys are really going to have to start cursing less now that you’re parents,” says Max.

As if on cue, Kylie starts screaming again. 

Michael pulls his mouth away from Alex’s and starts rubbing her back. “Yeah, baby girl, I know, you’re hungry. Let’s see what we can do about that.”

Thankfully being pregnant hasn’t made him grow actual breasts, but his pecs are kind of swollen, and his nipples are puffy and tender as fuck. 

“Ow!” he yelps as Kylie finally manages to clamp down and start nursing. “_Shit_, she’s strong!”

“She knows what she wants and she goes for it,” says Alex.

“Yeah,” says Michael. Kylie is radiating greedy contentment and he feels like his whole body is purring. “Yeah, she’s a fighter.”

He leans back against Alex and closes his eyes. Eventually he’s going to have to get out of this disgusting hot tub. Someone’s going to have to help Alex out because he took off his leg before getting in. Kyle’s going to want to examine him and the baby. At some point the placenta’s going to make an appearance. Gross.

But right now he’s floating in state of hormone-laced euphoria, and nothing feels like a problem. He knows intellectually that it’s going to be hard. He’s an alien. Alex is disabled. They’re both more than a little fucked in the head. And now on top of that the baby’s going to make them sleep-deprived and cranky for the next god knows how long. They’re going to have fights. They’re going to feel like they have no idea what they’re doing. Kyle’s probably going to have to talk at least one of them down off the ceiling at some point.

But somehow he knows it’s all going to be okay.

“We’re going to be fine,” he mutters dreamily to Alex, a little shocked by how sure he feels.

Alex’s arms tighten around him. “Of course we are,” he whispers in Michael’s ear. “We’ve got each other.”


End file.
